Techno Electric plans $1 billion investment in data centers

Power infrastructure major Techno Electric and Engineering Company (TEECL) is planning to speculate $1 billion (about Rs 7,310 crore) in organising data centres throughout key Indian cities.

The Kolkata-based listed firm with greater than 400 accomplished engineering procurement and building (EPC) tasks is seeking to develop data centres backed by inexperienced power.

“We will be leveraging our renewable energy assets across the country to ensure these data centre projects are 100% powered by renewable energy and remain carbon-neutral. With this objective, we have finalised a plan to develop 250 MW of data centres across India over the next five years,” Ankit Saraiya, wholetime director, TEECL, advised ET.

The firm is concentrating on Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Hyderabad, Pune, National Capital Region (NCR), Chennai and Kolkata for organising data centres.

For its first undertaking, which is arising in Chennai, the corporate has acquired a four-acre land parcel from the Tamil Nadu authorities at SIPCOT IT Park in town’s southern suburb of Siruseri.

The firm is investing about Rs 1,200 crore to develop this data centre with a complete load capability of 45-60 MW, and preliminary web site actions for this growth have began.

The second undertaking in Kolkata will even be of just about the identical measurement as that of the Chennai data centre and will probably be developed on practically 5 acres with an investment of about Rs 1,200 crore.

“Both Chennai and Kolkata data centre projects will comprise around $340 million or one-third of the total planned $1 billion investment,” stated Saraiya. “We are a debt-free company with over Rs 800 crore of cash reserves. We generate around Rs 200-250 crore of revenues through our EPC business year-on-year. We are well-funded internally to build these projects.”

The firm might go for leverage 60-40 with debt-equity composition, and additionally it is open to divesting fairness in these tasks.

The Chennai undertaking will probably be 100 % carbon-neutral as the corporate has 111 MW of wind power property in Tamil Nadu that will probably be used to gas the data centre there. The firm has additionally acquired two 10 MW biomass power crops in Kolkata that will probably be feeding energy to the data centre in the japanese metropolis and this will even be 100% renewable.

TEECL’s third data centre, in Hyderabad, will probably be developed over a bigger parcel of land than in Chennai and Kolkata. It might go as much as 50 MW and will probably be fully powered by the corporate’s captive solar energy infrastructure in Hyderabad. The firm’s fourth undertaking can be in both Navi Mumbai, Pune or Noida. It has engaged a marketing consultant to check and survey these markets.

“Apart from renewable energy, we will ensure that a fourth of the land is left for green space, where we would like to plant trees and develop parks to ensure it is further environment friendly. We will try to bring disruptive technologies in the power infrastructure space to ensure power consumption is as efficient as possible,” stated Saraiya.

Data centres in India are rising as essentially the most engaging development alternative for international institutional traders and main builders. Investments are flowing into the data centre markets, with a number of new markets being created concurrently, together with the fast growth of campus sizes discovered in essentially the most established international cities.

So far, $13.5 billion investment has been deliberate and dedicated for creating data centres in the nation and abroad companies’ contribution in that is greater than 70%, confirmed data from Cushman & Wakefield.

Leading international entities, together with STTelemedia, ESR, NTT, Colt and Princeton Digital Group, Brookfield Asset Management and Digital Realty, have already began investing in this section.

In current years India has undergone important digital transformation, with energetic web customers reaching 525 million in 2019, representing an annual development of over 19%. Low-cost smartphones and low-cost data tariffs have accelerated the shift to digital, with data consumption growing 37 instances between 2014 and 2018.

With a inhabitants of greater than 1.3 billion and data consumption per person forecast to achieve 18 GB per person by 2024, India represents a major market alternative, surpassed solely by the US and UK. Aajka Samachar