CapitaLand India Trust Management Pte. Ltd., the Trustee-Manager of CapitaLand India Trust (CLINT), will set up a data centre in Chennai, its third in India, at an estimated investment of about ₹1,940 crore.
It will be acquiring a 4.01-acre in Ambattur, Chennai for ₹83.28 crore to develop its third data centre in India. The overall investment of ₹1,940 crore will include land acquisition and the development of a state-of-the-art data centre in phases over the next four to five years. The acquisition of the site is expected to be completed by December 2022. The data centre is scheduled to be completed by end-2025, according to a statement.
The data centre will have a power capacity of 55 MW to host customers such as global technology giants and cloud service providers, as well as large domestic enterprise clients.
“The acquisition site is in a prime data centre location in Ambattur, close to sea cable landing stations, reliable power supply and a well-developed infrastructure. When fully developed, the data centre will have the capacity to host about 4,900 racks and operate at an efficient power usage effectiveness of approximately 1.45,” said Surajit Chatterjee, Managing Director, Data Centre, India, CapitaLand Investment (CLI), which oversees the growth of global data centre business.
Rising demand
Demand for data centres is rising due to improving technology infrastructure and increasing adoption of new technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud and the Internet of Things. These factors are expected to expand India’s total data centre capacity to 1,580 MW by 2026 at a compound annual growth rate of 22 per cent. Chennai is India’s second largest data centre co-location market with a current IT load capacity of 88 MW (about 12 per cent share of India’s total capacity).
“India’s data consumption and demand for information technology (IT) solutions are fast expanding but the country has one of the world’s lowest data centre densities. We will be developing a data centre in Navi Mumbai and another two data centres within our International Tech Parks in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Our data centres will further enhance the quality of CLINT’s portfolio and deliver sustainable returns to unitholders,” Sanjeev Dasgupta, Chief Executive Officer, of CLINT said.
“We are actively working on a pipeline of data centre deals across Asia. India is a particularly interesting market. in the last five years, $14 billion has been invested in India’s data centre sector, and the amount is expected to cross $20 billion by 2025,” said Patrick Boocock, CEO, Private Equity Alternative Assets, CLI.it
