Data centre industry in India gets $396-mn investment

Mumbai: The Indian data centre industry has attracted investments totalling around $396 million during January-September 2020, a report by Anarock and Mace said on Thursday.

"The Indian data centre industry has attracted close to $977 million in PE and strategic investments since 2008, of which nearly 40 per cent or approximately $396 million were infused between Jan-Sept 2020 period alone," said the report titled 'Navigating the India Data Centre Lifecycle - Trends & Perspectives'. It said that India will see at least 28 large 'hyperscale' data centres constructed over the next three years. These will span over 16 million square feet space with at least over 1,400 MW of IT power capacity, equalling nearly 0.6 million square feet and 50 MW per facility on an average per hyperscale data centre.

Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Group, said: "While India has been seeing a massive digital thrust since 2014, the current government's data localisation policy has paved the way for hyperscale data centres to handle the increasing data consumption."

He noted that 'hyperscale' facilities have clear advantages over smaller colocation centres as they can cater to the huge domestic data warehousing demand for operating efficiencies and thus pass on cost benefits to their customers.

"Smaller colocation facilities will need to reassess their competitive position and may need to repurpose to ensure survival," Puri said.

Indians' data consumption increased from 0.3 GB per user per month in 2014 to 10 GB per user per month in 2018. The per capita consumption is likely hit 25 GB per month by 2025 and the total data traffic in the country is likely to touch 21 EB (exabytes) per month, as per the report.

The report finds that India currently has 126 third-party data centres (colocation or hyperscale) spanning across more than 7.5 million square feet, and a cumulative IT power capacity of over 590 MW.

While 53 players own or operate these 126 third-party data centres, the capacity is highly concentrated among the top 12 players who operate 95 per cent of the total IT power capacity in the country.

Further, upcoming supply is expected to be concentrated in Mumbai and Chennai, followed by NCR and Hyderabad with a fair share of interest. Mumbai and Chennai together will witness 60 per cent of the total future capacity, with NCR and Hyderabad contributing another 33 per cent, it said.