Uttar Pradesh govt bags Rs 16,000-crore deal for data centre projects

The state is planning to set up smaller capacity data centres in the hinterland across the state. The policy will aim to attract private sector investment to attain Rs 30,000 cr in the next five years

Uttar Pradesh, which is looking to become a major data centre player in the South Asian region, has bagged projects worth Rs 16,000 crore in the new-age sector.
 

A data centre is a facility that houses shared information technology (IT) activities and equipment to store, process, and disseminate information and applications.
 

The government is in the process of amending its existing data centre policy to sweeten the deal for private sector investors.

Under this proposed policy, the state is planning to set up smaller capacity data centres in the hinterland across the state. The policy will aim to attract private sector investment to attain Rs 30,000 crore in the next five years. Data centre projects in UP include those of Hiranandani Group, Adani Group, NTT Japan, and Web Werks, among others.
 

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will inaugurate the state’s first data centre park in Greater Noida, on October 31. The Rs 5,000 crore mega data centre park has been developed by Yotta Infrastructure, Hiranandani Group’s data centre arm.
 

The first block — ‘Yotta D-1’— will go live on October 31. “The first block will have a capacity of 5,000 server racks with a 48-hour IT power backup,” a government official said. The project consists of six data centre blocks with a combined capa¬city to house 30,000 server racks along with 250 megawatt of power generation.
 

Due to the lack of robust data centres in India, the domestic data of different Indian and multinational companies are primarily preserved in servers located at offshore locations.
 

 This exposes vital data to possible cyberattacks and manipulations.
 

The Union government is pursuing an aggressive data localisation policy for ensuring data security with speedy spread of internet and online services. At present, less than 20 per cent of domestic data is preserved at onshore data centres.