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Hundreds of megawatts of data centres are expected to come up across India

- MOLLY R

India is witnessing a digital transformation on a tremendous scale across sectors. And this has led to large scale growth in India’s data centre industry. While there are challenges, it also presents an opportunity for data centre service providers to ramp up their investments. It is estimated that over the next decade, the country will need 7 to 10 times more data centre capacity to match the scale of demand.

Several Indian businesses have embarked on digital transformation initiatives, increasing demand for data and internet bandwidth across the country. These developments are driven by the growth of social media, the proliferation of smart devices, the localization of data, the rising popularity of cloud services, and the efforts of these businesses.

Devi Shankar, president, industrial & logistics | data centres, Anarock Capital, says, “The data centre boom started in 2019-20 and there are several reasons for this. India has turned heavily towards digitisation. A quick example is the rampant use of UPI, one of the biggest examples of digitisation, where even a vendor in a rural area has adopted UPI. This payment system itself has become a huge volume. Apart from that covid with its online deliveries and boom of ecommerce has ensured that everything is online.”

Data centres are the physical infrastructure required for the storage and computing of data. India is a growing economy that is digitally advanced, ahead of several major markets. With over 700 million smartphone users, digitalisation is flourishing. Everything from fintech to e-commerce has a wide audience. This increase in the usage of apps and digital platforms have driven the demand for data centres to allow service providers to understand customer sentiment, improve efficiencies, and tap into newer markets.