India Data
Center market is growing owing to growing data consumption, which has spurred
the need to store and process data efficiently along with rising government
investment to provide the physical data center space. The increasing
availability of skilled workforce and operational and development cost
advantage across various end-use industries have led to an increased focus on
data center to overcome the situation of high data consumption. Moreover,
5G infrastructure investments in edge data centers have further boosted the
demand for data center. Government’s measures such as Digital India initiative,
emphasis on self-reliance, classification of data centers as infrastructure
asset are further increasing the demand for more data centers in the country,
which is increasing the capability for data center. Many enterprises are
adopting data center as a cost-effective solution. Moreover, the market is
expected to be driven by rising demand for digital age networking, which
enables businesses to progress toward digital transformation and produce new
business outcomes by utilizing new digital age technologies such as the
Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
thus relying on different software are driving the market. Moreover, the
growing demand for data and high bandwidth capacity, especially due to
increasing smartphone users promote the development of the data center market
of India throughout the forecast period.
A data center
is a physical location with networked computers, storage systems, and
computational infrastructure that businesses utilize to store, gather, analyse,
and disseminate massive quantities of data. It offers reliable storage without
the glitches of portable technology, eliminating a portion of losses, reduce
costs, manage data, and protect upcoming technology investments. Data centers
are a crucial component of every organization, since they are created to
support corporate applications and offer services such as productivity
applications, high-volume e-commerce transactions, data storage, management,
backup, and recovery. Edge data centers can assist reduce latency for
real-time, data-intensive workloads including big data analytics, artificial intelligence
(AI), and content delivery apps, enhancing overall application performance and
user experience. For enterprises that lack the space, personnel, or experience
to deploy and operate all or part of their IT infrastructure on-site, managed
data centers and colocation facilities are choices. India's data center
industry is expanding rapidly in the age of digitization. With a predicted
expansion driven by technologies like artificial intelligence, machine
learning, and analytics, the nation is ideally positioned to become a worldwide
hub for data centres focusing on cloud computing.
Rapid
Adoption of Cloud and Digital Transformation by Indian Companies
People are
flocking to the cloud because of its scalability and low cost. Several cloud
service providers from across the world have revealed their availability zones
in India, particularly in locations like Hyderabad, Delhi (NCR), Chennai,
Mumbai, and Bengaluru since they have strong fiber connection in addition to
being close to clients. Three availability zones (AZs) are being built by
Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Hyderabad. Microsoft has purchased Hyderabad-area
property tracts to establish a new data center zone. While 39% of medium-sized
businesses and 38% of small businesses started their cloud journeys, 67% of
large firms had already advanced cloud adoption. Moreover, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR
are Google's two cloud computing hubs in India. Businesses like Yotta
Infrastructure, NTT-Netmagic, STT GDC India, Sify Data Centers, CtrlS, and
others building hyperscale data centers and data center parks in India.
Moreover, as cloud-managed services are a vital part of digital transformation,
their demand will further expand in the recent years. The government's efforts
to transform India into a global data hub has resulted in several regulations
and reforms that have given the essential framework for this expansion, and
more new firms are expected to enter the market during the forecast period.
Therefore, the rapid adoption of cloud and digital transformation by Indian
companies are driving the growth of India Data Center Market.
5G Will
Increase Investments in Edge Data Centers
Edge computing
is becoming more popular in the market just like 5G has been massively ramped
up in the last couple of years, as a result of the rising use of connected
devices among consumers and organizations. In many Tier II and Tier III cities
as well as in rural areas, this has resulted in a significant demand for higher
bandwidth Internet, necessitating the construction of data centers to process
information on comparison with big cities. Edge data centers will develop a
decentralized data center architecture in which numerous edge data centers are
linked to a single hyperscale facility. Over 25.2% of Indian population in 189
Indian cities have 5G coverage as of January 2023, with significant market
participants including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea. In 256
cities, Reliance Jio is offering 5G connection. Bharti Airtel is second,
covering more than 80 cities, while Vodaphone is third. Throughout India,
companies such as Airtel are partnering up to design and build networks by
using equipment from large enterprises such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung.
Moreover, the 5G implementation will further offers faster access to information,
which will lead to more edge datacenter deployments due to the surge in data
consumption. Furthermore, the companies are extending their 5G coverage to new
locations across the country which necessitates the construction of the
physical infrastructure to facilitate the significant degree of data sharing.
Hence, increasing 5G investment is driving the growth of India Data Center
market.
Growing Use
of Renewable Energy
While the data
centers are driving India’s digital transformation journey, many data center
service providers have invested in clean, renewable energy sources to run their
existing and future facilities as a result of the rising data center power
usage and the desire to reduce carbon footprint. Data centers can consume large
amount of energy if not planned well. The main energy sources in India are
coal, lignite, oil, and natural gas, both of which have a negative influence on
the environment. On the contrary, according to Central Electricity Agency
(CEA), around 42.5% of the energy generation is done through renewable sources
such as wind power, solar power, hydropower, and biomass energy. In addition,
the growth is contributing to the increase of 10.8% in energy generation in the
country during the year 2022-23. Moreover, Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha
evam Utthaan Mahabhiyaan (PM KUSUM) and Draft National Energy Policy, both call
for the Net Zero Emissions by 2070 to be implemented in order to fully use the
country's potential for renewable energy. Furthermore, the Government of India
has also taken the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme initiative to
strengthen the industrial sector and increase the production of raw materials
for renewable energy. Recently, Indian government has budgeted an additional
investment of more than USD 30 billion to produce renewable energy by using
sunlight, air, and water. Furthermore, government initiative toward
proliferating the large-scale projects to adopt and support renewable energy
such as the scheme for biogas power initiative was set by the Ministry of New
and Renewable Energy. The Indian data center business is still in its infancy,
so as it expands, it will be more adaptive and able to absorb green technology.
Besides this, the country may strengthen its position as a worldwide hub for green
data centers. Therefore, growing use of renewable energy has led to the growth
of India Data Center market.
Recent
Development
- On January 31,
2023, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres India Private Limited, a data center
firm announced a partnership with O2 Renewable Energy (IV) Private Limited, a
subsidiary of O2 Energy SG Pte. Ltd., Singapore. O2 Energy will supply
renewable energy from its Wind-Solar Hybrid (WSH) project of 201.1 MWac to Data
Centre in Bengaluru under a captive structure. Where FRN2 will provide capacity
for 600 racks on the ground floor and MCR2 will offer more than 1000 new server
racks.
- On May 12,
2022, Sify Technologies Limited, a digital ICT solutions provider firm
announced the strategic partnership with Cyxtera. As part of the partnership,
it will help Cyxtera to bring colocation solutions in India. Customers of
Cyxtera will now be able to use infrastructure solutions at Sify's
carrier-neutral facilities in Mumbai, Noida, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata
for their hybrid IT requirements.
- On January 16,
2023, CtrlS Datacenters Ltd., announced the expansion of its business in the
global market and is planning to foray into several potential markets in
Southeast Asia and the Middle East to build a connected future that will
benefit enterprise customers and hyperscalers around the world.