Ascendas India Trust to build datacentre near Mumbai

CapitaLand’s Ascendas India Trust is investing 12 billion rupees ($160.9m) in its first Indian datacentre campus in Airoli, a growing datacentre hub in Navi Mumbai near Mumbai.

The 6.6-acre greenfield site will be developed in phases into a fully fitted datacentre campus with a total potential built-up area of up to 575,000ft² and 90MW of power to host customers including global technology giants and cloud service providers, as well as large domestic enterprise clients.

The acquisition of the site from third-party vendors is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2021. The campus will comprise two buildings. In phase one, the first building, which is scheduled to be ready by the second quarter of 2024, will have a built-up area of about 325,000ft².

The demand for datacentres in India is rising due to improving technology infrastructure and increasing adoption of new technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud and the internet of things. These factors are expected to increase India’s total datacentre capacity to 1,007MW by 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 31%.

He Jihong, CEO for datacentre and chief corporate strategy officer at CapitaLand, a Singapore real estate group, said: “India’s rising data consumption and demand for quality solutions present a good opportunity for CapitaLand’s entry into the country’s burgeoning datacentre market.”

CapitaLand’s datacentre investment in India follows its recent $562.6m acquisition of its first hyperscale datacentre in Shanghai’s Minhang district as it looks to expand its datacentre portfolio in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

“We are stepping up our growth in datacentres and accelerating expansion of the group’s portfolio into new economy asset classes. With this new development in India, the group’s investment in datacentres this year has amounted to about S$1.7bn ($1.3bn).

“We will continue to build and leverage our expertise in datacentre design, development and operations across the regions. We look forward to working with our capital and business partners to expand our datacentre portfolio in our core markets,” He said.

The datacentre campus site which Ascendas India Trust is acquiring is in a prime location along Thane-Belapur Road, easily accessible from Mumbai city via the Eastern Express Highway.

Navi Mumbai has emerged as a preferred datacentre location as it is close to sea cable landing stations, larger land parcels, abundant and scalable power, developed infrastructure and neutral network connectivity.

When fully developed, the datacentre campus will have capacity to host about 8,500 racks, operating with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of about 1.4. The datacentre will also adopt sustainable design principles and green building standards, touting features such as intelligent energy management systems, solar panels, and waterless cooling systems.