The Bengal government is seeing investor interest in setting up data centres in the state, but the IT sector on Wednesday urged the state to come out with a comprehensive policy covering incentives and energy costs — two key considerations for any firm to consider putting up data centre infrastructure.

Two developments relating to data centres have taken place in the state despite the Covid pandemic. First, in August last year the state government had cleared a proposal from Reliance Jio to set up a cable landing station at an investment of Rs 1,000 crore.

A cable landing station could encourage more IT sector investments in the state. Reliance Jio has also taken around 40 acres of land at the Silicon Valley Hub at New Town to set up data centres.

Second, the Mumbai based Hiraranandani group has evinced interest to invest around Rs 8,500 crore in Bengal to develop logistics and hyperscale data centre parks in the state. The data centres will be put up by group firm Yotta. Bengal industries and information technology minister Partha Chatterjee said Ctrl has also sought six acres of land at Silicon Valley Hub for setting up data centres.

“The companies have asked for a policy and sought incentives and some have called for a reduction in electricity charges. We have heard their views,” said Chatterjee after a meeting with IT industry officials. The minister said that review meetings will take place at six month intervals to monitor the progress of projects. The matters discussed, including policy and incentive support, will be brought to the attention of Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

According to data compiled by JLL, Calcutta’s existing data centre capacity was 6 MW in 2020 (1 percent of total inventory) and the upcoming cable landing station could play a crucial role in expanding capacity in the medium term. In contrast, Mumbai has a capacity of 199 MW in 2020 with 9 cable landing stations.

Several states are considering having a data centre policy amid the rising demand from enterprises on account of upgradation of IT infrastructure in Covid pandemic and data localisation requirements.

Large projects

Chatterjee said that two large IT projects in the state – Infosys and ITC Infotech – are progressing. The minister said that Infosys project could be completed within 20 months from the start or work and ITC Infotech’s project is expected to be operational soon.

The state has also received applications for 88 modules in its own IT parks and has also seen investor interest in the electronics manufacturing sector.