India’s data-centre space footprint may reach 20 million square feet by 2025

The study estimates data centre capacity to double to around 1,500 MW by 2025 from the existing 770 MW. This has prompted large conglomerates, such as Amazon Web Services, Adani Group, Oracle, Reliance Industries-Microsoft, Yotta Infrastructure and Blackstone’s Lumina CloudInfra, to build data centres at major cities such as Mumbai and Chennai.

“A large amount of India’s data-centre demand is still posted overseas. With data localisation rules coming into place, this trend is already reversing,” said Sanjeev Dasgupta, chief executive officer of the Trustee-Manager of Ascendas India Trust. “We are seeing massive demand from the enterprise segment, retail sector and BFSI.”

India is also becoming a hub for data centres throughout Asia-Pacific. Faced with the challenge of expanding into other developed markets such as Singapore, India is pursuing a steady growth-linked expansion that is directly linked to end-user consumption.
Edge data centres, coupled with the 5G launch, are going to create additional opportunities for expanding the data centre footprint across the country. “Edge data centres are the next big opportunity in India, as these data centres support the sustainable transition of data centres through a smaller footprint and lower energy consumption,” said Ramesh Nair, CEO, India and MD, Market Development, Asia, Colliers.