Mumbai has most data centres in India, 42% of installed capacity: Report

Mumbai witnessed the highest capacity addition on data centres in the January-June period this year and now accounts for 42% of the overall installed capacity in the country, a report said

The financial capital witnessed the highest capacity addition on data centres in the January-June period this year and now accounts for 42 per cent of the overall installed capacity in the country, a report said on Monday.

Cable landing stations, assured power supply and incentives given by the Maharashtra government were cited as the prime reasons why the data centres have chosen to operate in the region, as per the report by a realty consultancy firm.

The demand for data centre space was helped by regulations like the one on data localization for all financial sector firms, and realty companies which are holding on to land banks amid a slump in the market are looking at the space very keenly.

The financial capital accounted for the 19 MW of the 27 MW capacity added in the first half of the calendar year, followed by Bengaluru at 5 MW and Delhi NCR at 3 MW. The overall capacity grew 8 per cent to 375 MW, as per the report by the consultancy firm JLL. Data centre volumes are measured in terms of power they consume.

It is estimated that Mumbai will be adding 360 MW of data centres in the next five years to 2025 and will be ahead of Chennai where it estimates a capacity addition of 134 MW.

The overall installed capacity is expected to grow to 1,078 MW by 2025 from the 378 MW as of June and may lead to investment of USD 4.9 billion in the business, it said.

Factors like growing digital economy, increased investor interest and stable long-term returns will be supporting the demand, and growth will be led by colocation sites which offer advantages like lower upfront costs, heightened data security, uninterrupted services and scalability, its regional managing director for Mumbai Karan Singh Sodi said.

It said data usage has been rising in India and the daily data consumption rose from an average of 270 petabytes (PB) during pre-lockdown period to an average of 308 PB post lockdown period, registering a 14 per cent rise led by Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

Its head of data center advisory Rachit Mohan said the data center industry became the backbone of the digital economy in the current work from home phase, led by IT/ITeS, Banking and Financial Services, e-commerce, capital markets, social media and education sectors.