Hyderabad, Sep 27 (FN Agency) An increasing data usage in the financial, entertainment and retail domain and higher commitment by cloud service providers will drive Indian Data Centre (DC) industry growth leading to demand for 7.8 million sq. ft real estate space by 2024. According to JLL, a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management, in a report on ‘Data Centre Update: H1 2022’ said, To meet the demand, investment requirements will be close to USD 4.6 billion in the next two-and-half years. The Data Centre industry capacity is expected to double in the next two-and-half years to 1318 MW from the existing 637 MW capacity, it said the average monthly data usage per user was at 15.8 GB as of March, 2022, up by 28 per cent from an average of 12.3 GB in the corresponding period in last year.
“Mumbai on account of the highest share of capacity addition would entail a demand for 4.6 million sq ft, followed by Chennai at 1.9 million sq. ft and NCR-Delhi at 0.7 million sq ft. Regulatory approvals and construction period would lead to a 3–4 year time frame for the DC (Data Centre) capacity to become operational. Some players are opting for the conversion of existing industrial buildings to DC facilities by using retrofit options to meet technical parameters, said Dr Samantak Das, Chief Economist and Head of Research & REIS at JLL India. “The expected supply addition would entail an investment of USD 4.6 billion during H2 2022-2024. Mumbai will require USD 2.7 billion with a major share of expansion expected in the Navi-Mumbai region. Chennai would require USD 1.1 billion investments while NCR-Delhi would need USD 0.6 billion,” he added “Indian DC market has been at a high growth trajectory with 18 percent growth in occupancy from 500 MW as of the end of 2021 to 589 MW as of June 2022.
Mumbai has been leading the DC hub in India and has witnessed absorption of 58 MW during H1 2022, which is also the highest across major Asia Pacific markets, said Rachit Mohan, Head, Data Centre Advisory, India, JLL. Strong growth in digital payments, the report stated 58 transactions per second in FY 2021 (April 20-March 21) to 95 transactions per second in FY2022 (April 21- March 22), a 64 percent increase. About 58 percent of internet subscribers are online gamers driving high data usage, the report revealed. The DC industry witnessed robust demand growth with an estimated absorption of 89 MW during the first half of 2022, as against 47 MW during H1 2021. The delivery of pre-committed supply to cloud service providers has led to sharp growth in absorption.
Mumbai continues to lead the demand with a 65 percent share of absorption since cloud players continue to increase their footprint as the migration to the cloud has been gaining pace. Pune accounted for a 10 percent share due to periodic space taken by cloud service providers while Chennai took up a 9 percent share of total absorption, the report said. Apart from colocation supply, self-build ambitions by Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are visible in some DC hubs. Hyderabad has been successful in attracting CSPs to set up self-build capacities by offering regulatory incentives and a proactive approval process by the state government. On the other hand, NCR-Delhi has been able to attract colocation operators to set up operations in the region. Colocation data centres offer space on rent to third parties to maintain their servers or other network equipment, the report added.