CtrlS Datacentres on Thursday said it has earmarked an investment of ₹2,200 crore for a data centre project to be implemented in the city over four phases with an IT load capacity of over 60 MW (megawatt).

The first phase of its project at Silicon Valley Hub in New Town is expected to go live by the end of the second quarter of the ongoing fiscal.

The company has taken 5 acres of land and is looking to add 16 MW of data centre capacity in the first phase.

“In Calcutta, we had acquired a 5-acre land last year and today as we speak, we are doing a building of 16 MW capacity with a ₹35 crore per MW kind of investment,” said Suresh Kumar Rathod, president, of co-location business, CtrlS Datacentres.

He added that the Calcutta campus can be scaled up between 60MW and 80 MW with an additional three phases.

The company has 15 data centres across the country in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Lucknow and Patna, with a combined capacity of 250 MW. The company is looking to scale up the capacity to 1000 MW by 2030 with expansion at existing as well as new sites.

“We are coming up with about 600 MW campus in Mumbai and another 300 MW is being planned in Hyderabad. Out of 600 MW in Mumbai, already about 150 MW is added. Our Chennai campus would be close to about 120 MW. In Bangalore, we are currently at 12 MW and we would add 50 MW across two micro markets," said Siddharth Reddy, vice- president, corporate strategy, CtrlS Datacenters.

"In Ahmedabad we are building about 10 MW campus, in Patna we are coming up with 12 MW campus, and in Lucknow, we will have 10 MW in two phases. Overall, we have around 17 odd cities on the radar which we have identified.”

Datacentre potential

A study by Cushman & Wakefield has estimated that there is potential for an additional 1.7-3.6 GW (gigawatt) data centre capacity over and above the planned development of 2.32 GW of colocation data centre capacity, taking the potential possible capacity in the country to over 5 GW.

“The Indian data centre industry has been witnessing exponential growth over the past few years. This is fuelled by rapid expansion especially post-Covid, in digital penetration levels and adoption of new-age technologies, including 5G, cloud computing, IoT, and Generative AI. We believe India needs 5-6.9 GW of capacity,” said Vivek Dahiya, managing director and head data centre advisory team, Asia Pacific, Cushman & Wakefield.