India set to add about 250 megawatt data centre capacity 2023 Savills

Driven by digitisation, cloud computing and government intervention, India is expected to add around 250 megawatts (MW) of data-centre capacity in 2023, taking the total capacity to 1.15 gigawatts (GW) during the year, real estate consultancy firm Savills India has said.

Last year, India saw an increase in data centre colocation capacity of more than 150 MW, with 60 percent of the additions taking place in Mumbai, and 30 percent in Chennai, Savills India said in a report.

“As of 2022, the cumulative operational colocation capacity of data centres in the country exceeded 900 MW totalling over 9 msf gross built-up area. This is mainly concentrated in Mumbai and Chennai due to landing stations for submarine cables that carry internet traffic between countries,” the report said.

The data centre market saw the transaction of more than 500 acres of land for developments, of which 45 percent was in Mumbai, 26 percent in Hyderabad and 14 percent in Pune.

The report added that about 2 million square feet (msf) will be added towards data centre growth.

States such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana and West Bengal have announced data centre policies in the last two years to facilitate investments, realising the growth potential.

The major buyers were still colocation operators at 54 percent and hyper-scalers such as Amazon Web Services. Microsoft contributed to an extent of 46 percent for self-build.

The key colocation players that acquired land in 2022 across multiple cities include AdaniConnex, NTT, Nxtra, CapitaLand and WebWerks.

“Going forward, the data centre industry’s focus will shift towards being as close as possible to the customer base, including those in Tier-2 cities like Jaipur, Lucknow, Kochi, Coimbatore etc. This trend will drive demand for real estate in Tier-2 as well as Tier-3 cities in some regions,” Niraj Karale, Director & Head, Data Centre Services, Savills India, added. Moneycontrol