The personal data protection law is expected to give a huge boost as it will require data to be stored in the country, says the property consultant
India’s colocation data centre (DC) industry is expected to double its capacity from 499 megawatts (MW) IT load in H1 2021 to 1,008 MW by 2023. This, in turn, would lead to the need for over five million sq ft of real estate, JLL research has said.
Mumbai and Chennai are expected to be leading DC hubs due to assured power supply, undersea cable landings and large user markets.
One of the biggest enablers for the growth would be the Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP), the property consultant said.
“The colocation industry is expected to benefit from the legislation due to the prerequisite for data storage in the country,” said Rachit Mohan, Head, Data Center Advisory – India, Co-Head, Office Leasing Advisory – Mumbai, JLL.
The data protection bill is among the 26 listed for the winter session of Parliament that begins November 29.
The law would represent a major milestone for India’s colocation DC industry, which provides IT infrastructure for storage and computing requirements, JLL said.
The potential of the industry was evident from the fact that the Centre enacted three central legislations and four states came out with data centre sector policies. Four more were in the process of notifying the same, Mohan said.
Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha have a dedicated policy. West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Haryana had notified DC regulations, JLL said.
“The importance of information in the form of data has gained prominence over the years with the entire digital revolution being driven by the usage of data,” he said.
The Centre has formulated a Data Centre Park Policy and the creation of four Data Centre Economic Zones that aims to make India the global DC hub.
The draft policy aims to accord “infrastructure” status to the sector bringing in the benefits of availing long-term credit from domestic and international lenders.
Protecting data
“The increasing digital economy has also necessitated regulations to protect the right of Indian users by storing the details of the digital transaction locally. The Reserve Bank of India has issued a directive imposing data localisation requirements on service providers/intermediaries / third-party vendors and other entities in the payment ecosystem.
“The financial regulator has issued various directives for financial intermediaries to comply with the localisation provisions. The local storage of digital transactions has already led to an increase in demand for data centres from the BFSI sector,” said Samantak Das, Chief Economist and Head of Research & REIS (India), JLL.
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