“India’s data for India’s development” report came out last week, which primarily states a time-frame that would be put in place for the transition to data storage within the country. More than online markets, digital commerce and data analysis, the policy is expected to help the Indian real estate sector.
Sector experts estimate India will become the second-largest data centre market in Asia-Pacific by 2020. According to a Gartner India study, the market doubled to $4.5 billion in 2018 from $2.2 billion in 2016, as more foreign nations sought to store data in India.
Although the concept of data centres is still nascent in stage, the demand for these centres is rising and stakeholders are strategising to best align with the ongoing trend. Currently, data centres in India occupy around 12 million sq ft in space, growing at a compounded annual rate of 20 per cent. To meet the demand for more and more data centres, more and more specialised Grade-A commercial spaces will be required.
Apart from the suburbs of tier-1 cities, the data centres are also moving to tier-2 and other smaller towns owing to the fact that the power situation has improved a lot. So far, the centres have so far been mostly located in and around Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
“Data centre capacity in India is estimated to increase by almost 68 per cent from 2018 by the end of 2020. Ample electricity is now available for data centres through the national power grid,” says Niranjan Hiranandani, president of the realty companies’ body, Naredco, Business Standard reported.
However, there are various challenges that need to be addressed if the real estate segment wants to witness a boom in data centres:
- High real estate cost
- power,
- cooling, rack space,
- CPU availability,
- other infrastructure components such as UPS devices, HVACs, generators, branch circuits.
Upcoming data centres:
- Reliance Jio is will invest about Rs 1,000 crore to set up a data center in the upcoming Silicon Valley project in Kolkata
- CtrlS, plans to invest Rs 2,000 crore to develop data centres in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai