Data Centre BOOM

With the rise in Cloud adoption, data generation and emergence of data-as-a-service model, data centre business in India is not just growing big, but also emerging as the new real estate asset class

- RUKMINI RAO

WHY THE SPURT?

Cheap data and high mobile user penetration, increased digital play

Increase in data consumption India is currently the fastest-growing Internet market globally

Rise in Cloud adoption, Data Analytics

Anticipation of data localisation laws boosting the market further

On the morning of October 12, at around 10 a.m., power supply lines broke down in Mumbai for hours, crippling city life. Thousands were stuck inside local trains, telecom and internet services went down, and work from home (WFH) took a massive hit. But for one sector, it was business as usual. Data centre operations continued to function normally across the city, also known as the data centre capital of India. Sunil Gupta, CEO of Yotta, a Tier IV-certified data centre, said in a LinkedIn post that when the power outage occurred from the utility side, diesel generators kicked in automatically and started powering the server racks as well as chiller/cooling system and all other support loads. “To keep the building operations uninterrupted, we have 600,000 litres of fuel stored in underground tanks that can keep us running for 2 continuous days (48 hours) at full load and for much more no. of days at partial load.”

Driven by the cheapest data prices in the world, low-cost smartphones, internet penetration in rural areas and video consumption, India’s data centre market has always been a favourite among global players. The pandemic has added further to the demand.

The Cloud Play