Venkatesh Ganesh 
The Uttar Pradesh cabinet has given its nod for a data centre policy, as the state looks to attract more investments and comply with the data localisation push advocated by the Indian government.
The policy is expected to bring in Rs 20,000 crore in investments, according to a government notification. Industry watchers opine that this is the state government’s efforts to further attract capital into the State, which has been envisaged by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The policy aims at developing 250 MW of data centre industries in the state and setting up at least three private data centre parks. As per the red carpet effort to woo investors, they will be given provisions dealing with capital, interest rate, subsidies on land procurement, as well as non financial incentives.
Special incentives will also be provided for proposals coming to the backward regions of Bundelkhand and Purvanchal, the government said.
The state government, also said that setting up data centre parks will also lead to various information technology and related units coming up in the vicinity, leading to an expected overall direct employment of 4,000 people and indirect employment of 20,000 people. It also said that it will give global data centre players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM an opportunity to come and set shop in the state.
NTT India recently got allotted six acres of land for building 70 MW of data centre capacity, in Noida. Similarly, STT Global Data Centres India also plans to develop 18 MW data centre with an investment of Rs 600 crore in Noida. Last year, Hiranandani group’s Yotta Infrastructure said that it will be investing Rs 7,000 crore in the Greater Noida region, by setting up co-location data centers.
The Uttar Pradesh government’s initiative also needs to be seen in the backdrop of the Indian government’s draft of a national Data Centre (DC) policy, which was drafted last year. The policy focuses on simplifying existing rules, indigenous manufacturing and giving it “infrastructure” status, all of which is expected to bring in big ticket investments.
Since the onset of Covid-19, data consumption globally has syrged and in India too it has gone up, on the back of Work From Home, tele-medicine, online education and digital commerce. This, coupled with the upcoming Personal Data Protection Law has made the IT Ministry to come up with a framework for data centres.
Currently, data centers are restricted specific areas in the country such as Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, due to predictable power availability and reliable IT infrastructure.
