Data centres to attract large funding

Chennai: Indian data centres are expected to attract large-scale private equity investments going forward with large platforms announcing their readiness to fund the sector.

In July, Yondr Group, a global developer, owner-operator and service provider of hyperscale data centres, formed a strategic joint venture with private equity firm Everstone Group to deploy $1 billion to develop data centres in India.

In the same month, Global alternative asset manager Brookfield Asset Management’s flagship listed infrastructure company Brookfield Infra-structure and US-based Digital Realty are planning to jointly invest over $2 billion to develop, own and operate institutional data centres across India.  

Further, global businesses which are into data management like Iron Mountain, Equinix and EdgeConneX have also announced partnerships or acquisitions to develop capacity in India.

Hyperscalers are actively committing investment in digital infrastructure in India. Google has committed to invest $10 billion and Amazon Web Services (AWS) intends to inject $1.6 billion in their two upcoming data centres in Hyderabad.

“India is a natural fit for global data centre operators looking at their expansion in Asia due to its large domestic consumer base, additionally aided by the fact that data centre supply is reaching saturation point in cities like Singapore,” said Devi Shankar, president– industrial logistics & data centres, Anarock Capital.

Large data centres are looking to primarily set up facilities in major cities to service most of India and other regions in Asia in future.

Establishing data centres in multiple cities is expensive for the massive costs involved in laying inland fibre optic cables from the nearest paths. Hence, most of the current demand is focused on Mumbai, Chennai, Noida and Hyderabad, followed by Bengaluru, Pune and Kolkata.