Singapore-based Capitaland is ramping up its investments in its India datacenter business within months of foray into the country as it sees massive demand and growth opportunities here.

“We are looking at investing S$1.5-2 billion (Rs 8,300-11,100 crore) over the next 5-6 years in India, with plans to expand into all 5-6 major metros in the country,” Sanjeev Dasgupta, Chief Executive Officer of the Trustee-Manager of Ascendas India Trust, told ETCIO. Ascendas India Trust is a Capitaland subsidiary focused on capitalizing on the fast growing IT industry and logistics/industrial asset classes in India, as well as proactively diversifying into datacenters, which is an attractive, scalable and resilient new economy asset class.

In July last year, Capitaland had announced its foray into the country with an investment of Rs 1,200 crore to develop and operate phase one of its first datacenter campus on a prime site in India. The company claims it will be one of the largest data center campuses in Airoli, a growing data center hub in Navi Mumbai.

“Indian datacenter market stood at about 200MW about four years ago and has since doubled to 400MW, growing at about 27-28%. We expect this to at least double in the next 4 years,” Dasgupta said. “India will be a significant demand driver in the future. A large amount of India data center demand is still posted overseas. With data localization rules coming into place, this trend is already reversing. We are seeing massive demand from the enterprise segment, retail sector and BFSI. However, about 60-70% of our demand comes from global hyperscalers.”

Dasgupta said Capitaland, which has been a real estate firm, doesn’t want to stick to just land acquisition in India and would rather act as a full-fledged data center operator in the country.

“Right from sales and marketing to business development to design and operations and management, we’ve created all colocation and operating capabilities in India. We are rapidly scaling up the team here,” Dasgupta said.

While all large global datacenter players already have their presence in India, new and existing players are ramping up their investments to grab a pie of this rapidly growing market. Traditional real estate players such as Hiranandani and Adani have also been investing heavily into this relatively new asset class.

Earlier this week, Adani Group announced that it’ll invest Rs 4,600 crore in UP to set up two datacenter projects. In November, we wrote about how Hiranandani-owned Yotta is planning to invest as much as Rs 30,000 crore in the country, doubling its initial investment plans.

The Indian data center market would require $3.7 billion over the next three years to meet the industry requirement for six million sq ft of development, according to a report by JLL India. The report highlights that in 2020, the Indian data center industry saw a record 102 MW absorption, the second-highest compared to key markets in Europe and the Americas.

https://roxxcloud.com/singapore-based-capitaland-to-invest-rs-11000-crore-in-india-data-center-business-cio-news-et-cio/

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