10 Data Centers to Drive India’s Digital Transformation in 2024

Data centers actually serve as the backbone of India’s digital infrastructure. This is mostly applicable with enterprises moving their applications to the cloud. In this dynamic technology landscape, data centers ensure seamless connectivity, optimal storage and adequate processing power required by these enterprises. The Indian data center industry has been growing rapidly in the last 10-15 years due to the rapid digitization of enterprises, enhancements in tech infrastructure and the emergence of technologies like 5G, AI, blockchain and cloud computing.

In fact, factors like the rolling out of 5G services, global hyperscalers expanding their captive facilities in India and the entry of new operators (from global bigwigs to the Indian industry leaders like Reliance and Adani) are ensuring the continued growth of data centers in India even in 2024. Efficiency, reliability, sustainability and environmental consciousness, however, still remain the measuring benchmarks of Indian data centers even in 2024.

Tracking India’s Data Center Capacity

The numbers actually prove the growth momentum of the Indian data center market. The Indian data center capacity is expected to cross ~1,300 MW by the end of 2024. This will be a significant capacity leap from ~1,048 MW at the end of 2023, and even before that ~880 MW as of June 2023. The data center concentration though from the beginning is heavily skewed towards 7 cities and that remains so in 2024 even as others are coming into the fray. Mumbai-Navi Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Kolkata remain the locations of choice for most data centers.. Recently though other Tier 2 locations like Guwahati, Vishakapatnam, Bhubaneshwar, Nagpur and Dehra Dun are also emerging.

By the end of 2023, the data center stock in the top 7 cities in India stood at ~884 MW capacity, spanning over 13 million sqft. This was a 35% YOY growth from ~656 MW at the end of 2022. Another around ~230 MW of incremental co-location capacity got added by the end of 2023. Mumbai –Navi Mumbai head the charts and has a 52% share of the total data center capacity in the country, followed by Chennai at 16%, Delhi-NCR (11%), Bengaluru (9%), Pune (7%), Hyderabad (4%) and Kolkata at 1%.

The spread is heavily skewed at 88% in the top 4 locations though co-location and edge computing facilities are expected to change the dynamics soon. Edge data centers will increasingly foray into the tier2 cities, as the established data center players look to expand their footprints deeper into India during 2024. Overall, data center occupancy levels in India stood at about 75-80% in 2023, a figure which is likely to improve further by the end of 2024.

Analyzing the Data Center Locations

The Mumbai –Navi Mumbai belt is the largest local data centre market with over 50% pan-India share earning it the epithet of the data center capital of India. In fact, Mumbai was in the 3rd position in entire APAC region in the Cushman and Wakefield’s 2023 Global Data Centre Market Comparison report. The Greater Mumbai region is expected to lead the supply addition with a 46% share of the upcoming ~500 MW by the end of 2024. The presence of multiple underwater cable landing stations because of the proximity to the sea, coupled with inclusive government initiatives, and deep-rooted entertainment and BFSI industries have established Mumbai-Navi Mumbai as a top destination for BFSI, media, cloud and OTT companies to locate their data center operations.

Chennai has also emerged as a key established tier-I data center market in India, accounting for 16% of the total stock in the top 7 cities in 2023. The city is estimated to account for 21% share of the upcoming ~500 MW supply by the end of 2024. Besides proximity to the sea helping in underwater cable landing stations, Chennai’s distance from India’s regular earthquake prone zones as well as its distance from potential war zones (Pakistan, China etc.) make the city a favorable location for data center operators.

Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR accounted for ~10%of data center stock each, though Noida particularly in NCR is fast emerging as a key regional hub in terms of installed co-location capacity in 2024. Several greenfield facilities are expected to go live during 2024 in Noida. Delhi-NCR, as a result, is likely to surpass Bengaluru and reach close to Chennai in terms of installed data center capacity. While Delhi-NCR is likely to have 14% share by end of 2024, there is a perceptible Go East move too among data center operators and resultantly Kolkata’s share in data center capacity is likely to reach 3% in 2024.

10 Data Center Companies to Watch Out in 2024

AdaniConnex

This is a JV between Adani Enterprises and EdgeConnex Inc that has already invested $1.5bn and in the process of raising another $400mn offshore loan to establish data centers in Vishakapatnam, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai. This is part of the company’s overall plan to build 9 data centers and target a total capacity of 1 GW by 2030. Earlier in 2023 AdaniConneX secured another $213 mn loan to fund its data center in the Chennai 1 campus with a Phase 1 capacity of 17MW as well as the 50MW Noida campus in Noida.

ING Bank, Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank, Natixis, Standard Chartered Bank, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation are some of the BFSI facilities that are already being served by AdaniConnex. The major 6 cities housing the first 7 AdaniConnex data centres will have a total capacity of 450 MW over the next three years, while 550 MW is going to be in the tier-2 and 3 towns.

CapitaLand India

CapitaLand India Trust (CLINT) (formerly known as Ascendas India Trust) secured a loan of $155.9 mn from J.P. Morgan India for its Navi Mumbai data center. The campus in Airoli in Navi Mumbai, comprises of two buildings. Out of this, the first building comprises 325,000 sq ft and is scheduled to be ready by Q2 of 2024. This 6.6-acre greenfield site is being developed in phases and will finally reach up to 575,000 sq ft and 90MW once fully built up.

Another of CLINT’s data centers is scheduled to come up at Ambattur in Chennai. The company has already signed an MoU with the Tamil Nadu government for this purpose. This 55MW data center will be set up through CLINT subsidiary Minerva Veritas Data Centre. CapitaLand has also signed another MoU with the Telangana government for a 36MW data center in Hyderabad. CLINT is primarily targeting customers like global technology companies and cloud service providers.

CtrlS Datacenters

The Hyderabad based CtrlS has been the pioneer of Tier 4 data centers in India. The company, though, is currently looking to triple its number of data centres from 8 to about 25 by the end of 2024. Accordingly, CtrlS will expand its footprint by an additional 5 mn sq ft, from 1.2 million sq ft space it occupies currently. As a result, the company claims to emerge as the world’s largest Rated-4 data centre player.

As part of this pan-India expansion plan, CtrlS is building the 2mn sq ft hyperscale datacenter park in Navi Mumbai, while another 2 mn sq ft hyperscale data center Park in Hyderabad is now ready for construction. It has already begun work on another 1 mn square feet data centre in Chennai. These three projects will cumulatively add over 600 MW capacity to the overall CtrlS assets. CtrlS Datacenters is also setting up another hyperscale data centre facility in Kolkata, which is likely to be a key gateway to the Northeast

The company is also planning on expansion in Tier 2 cities now. It plans to invest Rs 250 crore in a greenfield Edge datacenter in Uttarakhand over the next 8-10 years. This proposed tier 4 datacenter will offer co-location, managed services, and cloud services, and support Industry 4.0 and latency-dependent applications.

Digital Connexion

This is another JV between Reliance Industries and Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and Digital Realty Trust with data centers in Mumbai and Chennai. The three stakeholders offer their individual strengths—Digital Realty offers energy-efficient data center platform design and operational protocols; Brookfield understands the Indian infrastructure market while Reliance provides Jio’s robust digital and connectivity ecosystem.

The flagship 20 MW greenfield data center, christened as MAA10, was launched in January 2024 in Chennai on a potential 100 MW campus. Additionally, Digital Connexion acquired another 2.15 acres of land in Mumbai to expand its footprint with the planned construction of a 40 MW data center. The data center is equipped to support AI and large language models and also offers standardized configurations and ultra-high-power densities (up to 70 KW per rack) to meet the high-density power, suitable cooling infrastructure, and interconnectivity demands of AI workloads.

Equinix

Equinix operates 250 data centers globally, with 52 of these being located in the APAC region. Equinix entered the Indian market through its acquisition of GPX Global Systems. In 2023, Equinix launched its full fledged services in India, with advanced offerings such as Equinix Fabric, Equinix Internet Exchange, and Equinix Internet Access.

The momentum, thus gathered, is expected to gain even more steam in 2024 leading to more secure and agile digital infrastructures. These are tailored to foster global data center-to-data center network connections with software-defined interconnection. Equinix has two carrier and service-neutral new data centers named MB1 and MB2 in Mumbai aimed to provide additional co-location space. These MB1 and MB2 sites host clients including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud, as well as 5 Internet exchanges. Equinix has invested $42 mn in another new data center MB4 in Kalwa in Thane that is set to be launched before March 2024.

Google

Google has two existing operations in the 2 Indian GCP cloud regions it maintains in Mumbai and Delhi launched in 2017 and 2021 respectively. Now Google is developing an 8-storey 381,000 sq ft data center in Navi Mumbai in partnership with Raiden Infotech that is set to be completed by 2025. This is expected to function in alignment with the existing operations. Google’s new data center is expected to be ready for use in 24 months.

Previously Google had also leased another 464,000-square-foot facility for 10 years at the Adani Centre in Noida. With these 2 data centers, Google continues to add to its cloud infrastructure in India, one of its biggest growth markets.

Sify

The Chennai-based Sify has raised funds for new data centers in 2024, as part of its overall investment of Rs 9,000 crore in the next 5-6 years on the greenfield data centre projects.. The company partnered with Kotak Data Center Fund to invest up to $73 million in its subsidiary Sify Infiniti Spaces that is operating these planned data centers.

Sify is investing Rs 3,000 crore in these ongoing projects coming up in Chennai, Mumbai, Noida and Bengaluru. These are slated to start early in 2024. Sify’s current data centre capacity stands at 100 MW through its 11 facilities across India even as it plans to add another 350 MW in the next few years in Chennai, Mumbai and Noida.

STT GDC

Sustainability has been a keyword for the Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC). It partnered with O2 Power to procure renewable energy for its Bengaluru facility in perfect alignment with its stated sustainability goals. At present, STT GDC India sources 36% of the energy for its facilities from renewable sources ensuring its commitment to sustainability policies.

In 2024, STT GDC invested around Rs 2,000 crore to develop two new data centers in its existing campus in Pune’s Dighi taking its total capacity to over 80 MW of IT load in this hub alone. This incidentally makes STT Global Data Centres’s Pune campus one of the largest data centre campuses in India with an existing capacity of 40MW of IT load spanning across 3 operational facilities.

Web Werks

The Web Werks JV with Iron Mountain plans to invest around Rs 7,500 crore to set up data centres in most of India’s major cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Noida by 2026. This will take its total India capacity to 200MW from 40MW at present. The JV had already signed MoUs with the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments to set up data centers in Chennai and Bengaluru.

Web Werks has also invested over Rs 1800 crore in a four-acre land parcel in Chennai for the construction of two new data centers by mid-2025. Additionally, Web Werks has strategically partnered with Supertron Electronics to boost enterprise sales, appointing them as the VAD for Web Werks. Further, it plans to invest another Rs 200 crore for a hyperscaler data center in Noida.

Yotta

Hiranandani Group-backed Yotta Data Services has unveiled expansions in Greater Noida and Guwahati, catering to the evolving demand for edge facilities in Tier II markets. Both of these planned operations will be completed and operationalized by mid or the end of 2024. The company has also identified Bhubaneswar and Nagpur as potential centers for growth.

The Yotta-D1 data centre is 85% full currently and the company now plans construction on its D2 and D3 facilities. The full capacity will have six full-scale buildings. To cater to the demand for AI-driven data, Yotta is building an AI-data center in GIFT City in Gujarat in collaboration with Nvidia.