Credit rating agency ICRA in its latest report has said that India’s data centre (DC) operational capacity is likely to more than double to 2,000-2,100 MW by FY2027 from 950 MW in FY2024, involving investment of Rs 50,000-55,000 crore, supported by digital explosion and data localisation initiatives. The DC capacity in India is dominated by a few players like NTT Global Data Centers, STT Global Data Centers, CtrlS Data Centres, Sify Technologies and Nxtra Data, which had a share of 85% in the operational capacity as of March 2024. However, considering the strong demand for data centres in the country, many new developers like Yotta, Digital Connexion, Lumina CloudInfra, CapitaLand, Digital Edge, etc., have entered the industry with massive investments.
According to the report, co-location services, backed by hyperscalers, contribute to the majority (80-85%) of the DC revenues in the country. Most of the upcoming investments are geared towards meeting the high demand for these services. This continues to be driven by hyperscalers (large cloud service providers) and verticals, such as banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) and information technology/IT-enabled services (IT/ITES), which require strict data confidentiality and complete management control of their operations.
The report said around 95% of the existing capacity is in six cities in India with Mumbai and Chennai leading the race due to their inherent advantage in the form of the dense wet cable ecosystem, which offers best latencies (amount of time it takes for a data to travel from one place to another). Mumbai has been the front runner due to its central location, reliable power and cable landing stations. Mumbai contributes more than 50% to the current capacity and is expected to remain the key location for the upcoming DC capacity in India.