Digitisation has imparted certain crucial changes in the ways of data consumption for the past decade in India. As millions of web users keep piling every year, the average data consumption by a user, which stood at 10 GB/month in 2018, reached 13.4 GB/month until 2020 and is expected to see a drastic rise of 21 exabytes/month until 2025. Businesses in the country are actively aiming to extract investments in the data centre sector which is likely to reach a magical figure of INR 450 Crore in the next five years. With tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft extending their digital services in India with their respective data centres, the Indian share of this market is currently growing at a 12 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), which is estimated until 2024.
With data being critical to any organisation, statutory body, or individual, the Indian government has also tabled the Personal Data Protection Bill in the parliament with an aim to conserve it for Indian users in the country. According to MeiTy, the approximate land area for the installation of a data centre would be 4000 square feet. Groups like Adani and Reliance, government bodies like National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), and leading IT companies of the country, all are pacing towards land acquisitions to accommodate their data projects, while a few have already started. Investments in edge data centres are also the focus, with speculations over the introduction of 5G services in the country. Most importantly, the adoption of cloud-based services has emerged to be one of the few evident factors for the rise in investments into the Indian data centre market.
As the Indian government is also promoting the use of renewable sources to generate energy, the data centre sector doesn’t remain deprived of the same. Considering all these factors, let’s take a look at some of the prominent data centre projects of India in 2021.
1. Ctrl S
Headquartered in Hyderabad, CtrlS aims to deploy its rated-4 data centres across 6 million square feet in India by 2023. Currently, it has its operational centres spread across 1 million square feet of land area in the country. Awarded with the CIO Choice Award – Public Cloud Services for Large Enterprises in 2014, it claims to be India’s only rated-4 data centre. Over 70% of all financial transactions in the country are carried out through the data centres of CtrlS, and the company claims to have over 250 million registered mobile banking users in India. Their locations include Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Noida. They specialise in providing all major digital services, including disaster recovery services, cloud security services, consultation in data centre builds, among others.
2. Reliance
Incorporating world-class services and cutting-edge infrastructure, Reliance has nine data centres in India. The Indian telecom giant has established itself as one of the leading outsourced data centre infra providers to businesses and companies. The company in 2019 also entered a 10-year partnership with Microsoft to build more of these across the country, while it is working towards the establishment of two of its hyper-scale data centres in India, which will be 7.5 MW each in capacity, and installed in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Reliance has emerged as one of the leading investors in the Indian sector by partnering Jio with Microsoft to run the latter’s Azure services in the data centres.
3. Amazon Web Services
Having its name established as the leader in the global data centre market with a third $100 billion quarter in a row this year, Amazon is set to launch one of its biggest ones in India in 2022. The services delivered through the platform of Amazon Web Services are unique in many ways, as users can opt for the development platform or programming language that matches their business. With audits like PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA, ISO 27001, FISMA Moderate, FedRAMP, and SOC 1 and SOC 2 audit, AWS has procured major security certifications that make its services the top choice for customers. In the previous quarter, Amazon achieved record revenue of $113.08 billion, to which AWS’s contribution is $14.81 billion.
4. Web Werks Data centre
Web Werks has signed an MoU with the Government of Karnataka to build a data centre with an investment of $100 million (750 crores). It will be spread across 125,000 square feet and have a power capacity of up to 12.5 MW. The new centre in the silicon city of India will address the rising demand from enterprises and hyperscalers like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. CEO Nikhil Rathi recently said that Web Werks aims to benefit its customers in South India with the best and scalable solutions combined with cloud on-ramp, security, and network, with this new setup. The company, meanwhile, is also mulling to launch a 12.5 MW data centre in Mumbai. Its operational locations already include Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi-NCR.
5. NTT Data centres
Leading provider of information and communication services, NTT Data made it to the list of top 100 companies of the Fortune Global 500. The company has 10 operational data centres in India spread over 1.5 million sq ft, with a capacity of over 150 MW. The one in Bengaluru houses the largest server room in the city. The company’s purpose-built large-scale data centre in Noida is spread across 48,000 sq ft. Recently, the company announced that it is planning to install six new ones in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, among others. NTT is working towards expanding its space up to 2.5 million sq ft in the next three years. With a focus on the use of renewable sources, the company also announced that it would invest $400 million in various solar projects in India.
6. Adani Data Centre Park
In collaboration with US-based EdgeConneX, the Adani group will be setting up a data centre and business park in Visakhapatnam. Through this partnership which is named AdaniConneX, the Indian multinational firm will develop data centres across India in the span of seven years. The group aims to power these hyper-scale and hyperlocal data centres using renewable energy. Last year in December 2020, it announced that a new setup will start in Chennai with a whopping investment of $340 million.
7. NPCI Data centre
National Payment Corporation of India recently announced that it would invest INR 500 crores in its own data centre, which will be installed in Hyderabad with an aim to help the processing of payments. The company has given the contract to Larsen & Toubro for the new construction to be located in Ranga Reddy village of Telangana. Once it is fully operational, NPCI aims to process transactions of at least 14,000 million every month.
8. Google’s Data centre
Google announced earlier this year about its plans to invest $10 billion in the Indian data centre sector for the next five years. With one operational setup in Mumbai, the tech giant aims to establish more of these across major Indian metropolitans, including the national capital, Chennai, and Hyderabad. These developments will be part of the ‘Google for India Digitisation’ initiative and are aimed at providing services to reduce the latency up to 80 per cent for its users in Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Earlier this year, Google also announced its second cloud region in India aimed at extending services to businesses across the public sector, private enterprises, government, and start-ups.
9. ESDS Data Centre
The ESDS has created a niche for itself by providing highly secured and top-notch data infrastructure with an aim to deliver “real value for businesses in India”. The company was established in Maharashtra’s Nashik in 2005 and has expanded its operations in over 17 countries, including Africa, South America, Middle East, and Europe, among others. Monitored by the IDC, the Tier-III data centre of ESDS in Mumbai is uptime certified and includes top video surveillance systems alongside the latest biometric authentication. With the use of multiple layers of redundancy in fire detection, power systems and suppression, the data centres of ESDS are built to eliminate all failure points. The company specialises in providing personalised managed and administration services.
10. Net4India
Spread over 70,000 sq ft of land space across India, Net4India has 10 data centres in the country. It specialises in providing enhanced reliability and swift development for e-business solutions. Locations comprise major metropolitans of India, including Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, and Chennai. With skilled and certified professionals to handle the web systems, Net4India hosts a wide range of solutions like server co-location services, application hosting, managed server facility and web hosting. Their data centres are equipped with world-class technologies along with the best physical security features, enhanced climate control, power backup, and 24/7 monitoring.
