Sterling & Wilson bets big on data centre biz, eyes Rs 800 cr topline in FY21

Sterling & Wilson, is betting big on data centre business and expects this segment to contribute significantly to the group's topline and close the fiscal year 2020-21 with a revenue of Rs 800 crore, a senior company official said.

Sterling & Wilson is a joint venture between the multi-billion-dollar Shapoorji Pallonji Group and the Khurshed Daruvala family.

The Pallonji family owns 67 per cent in the company, while 33 per cent is owned by the Khurshed Daruvala family.

From an order book of Rs 170 crore in FY18, and a revenue of Rs 160 crore, Sterling & Wilson's data centre business is on course to close the current fiscal with an order book of Rs 900 crore, clocking a revenue of Rs 400 crore.

We're already the largest data centre EPC contractor in the country, offering turnkey projects. With the massive investments coming into this segment from big domestic corporates and also foreign companies, we see huge potential for data centre business.

I expect our data centre vertical to contribute significantly to the group topline over the years and close fiscal 2021 with an order book of Rs 1,500 crore and revenue of Rs 800 crore, Khurshed Daruvala, the chairman of Sterling & Wilson told PTI.

He said the optimism comes from the average 30 per cent growth that the industry is witnessing and huge investments are also likely to flow into this sector.

It can be noted that the Adani Group had last year announced USD 10-billion investment into data centres, making it the largest in the space.

Though it still remains in the pipeline, the announcement shows the scope of the market, which is also growing as large companies are moving to the cloud as part of their strategy to manage space as well as cost.

From a revenue perspective, in FY18, the data centre business had an order book of a just Rs 170 crore, on which it had earned a revenue of Rs 160 crore. In FY19, revenue doubled to Rs 265 crore, he said.

The company has already built data centres of Vodafone and the NSE in Chennai and NSDL in Bengaluru and is also building data centres for some of the world's major cloud service providers.

Last year, it commissioned the Rs 450-crore State Data Centre in Jaipur for the Rajasthan government, which is the largest such facility in the public sector in the country. It has also bagged a USD 30-million state contract from Egypt.

Meanwhile, Daruvala expects data centre expansion to also boost his captive power business through industrial gensets, where his company is already the second largest player, in the large capacity segment, after Cummins.

The genset business contributed Rs 760 crore to the topline in FY19.

It can be noted that S&W installed the country's largest captive power units at the Delhi international airport powered by 42 MVA.

S&W is also the country's largest MEP (mechanical, electrical and public health engineering) contractor serving primarily hotels, malls, airports, metros and data centres.

The data centre vertical is being supported by the MEP vertical, Daruvals said they are working onto the carve it out to be an independent business shortly.