Calcutta ranks among the top three cities where data centres will flourish, promising fresh investment and providing key support to the IT industry.

The city only lags behind Mumbai in terms of land earmarked for data centre development, a recent analysis by real estate consultancy JLL showed, with 195 acres earmarked for this crucial infrastructure.

JLL predicts an increasing data usage in the financial, entertainment, and retail domain. Higher commitment by cloud service providers will drive Indian data centre industry growth leading to demand for 7.8 million square feet real estate space in the next two-and-a-half years.

Mumbai will lead the pack among the cities in new capacity addition, followed by Chennai and the NCR. The cities are at the forefront in part due to legacy reasons as well as demand coming up from the financial sector, which is a big user of data.

Submarine cable, which allows supersize packs of data transfer in seconds, is the backbone of a data centre. Historically, Mumbai and Chennai are connected to the world by sub-sea cables, allowing these cities to capitalise on data centre growth.

The expansion over the next 30 months will entail an investment of $4.6 billion, according to JLL’s report Data Centre Update: H1 2022.

“The industry is expected to double in the next two-and-a-half years to 1,318 MW from the existing 637 MW capacity,” Samantak Das, chief economist and head of research & REIS of JLL India, predicted. (Data centres’ capacity is often described by the electricity they consume).

Calcutta may not play a significant role in terms of capacity addition in the 30-month period JLL captured in the report but the future possibility remains immense.

A lot will depend, however, on Reliance’s proposed cable landing station in Bengal’s seaside town Digha.

The state government had approved the Rs 1,000 crore investment in 2020 for the cable landing station.

While there is no official update on the completion date, one estimate suggests that it may be ready in the second half of 2023.

“Once there is clarity on the completion of the cable landing station, which will connect Calcutta with the information superhighway, datacentres will follow. The city can potentially serve the eastern and northeastern states and neighbouring countries as well,” an industry executive pointed out.

Reliance Jio itself has taken a 40-acre plot for a data centre, while Adani Enterprise recently picked up a 51- acre plot for the same facility. The units will be located at the Silicon Valley Hub of Rajarhat, Calcutta. Moreover, Hiranandani Group is also planning a data centre at Hind Motor.

When it comes to land earmarked for data centre, Mumbai has 300 acres under various stages of development followed by Calcutta (195 acres)and Hyderabad (194 acres), the JLL report suggests.