Data centres, which have seen a massive growth on the back of data localisation diktats and the pandemic, will witness USD 5 billion in investments till March 2025 and a threefold increase in capacity, a report said on Monday.
The overall capacity, which is measured by the amount of power they consume, stood at 360 MW as of March 2020 and the same is expected to surge to 1,100-1,200 MW by end of March 2025 after the investments of up to USD 5 billion, the report by the research arm of rating agency Crisil said.
The data centre business has entities like Japan’s NTT, Sify, Hiranandani Group etc in the fray already, and others like the Adani Group and an arm of Bharti Airtel have already announced investment plans.
The research note said there was a 38 per cent growth in data consumption in April-June period and the consumption will continue to grow at a compounded rate of 25-30 per cent per year in the next few years, it said.
The growth in consumption will be driven by factors such as high growth in e-commerce, increase in usage of social media, greater preference for over the top (OTT) platforms, the government’s impetus to the Digital India initiative and rapid digitalisation
of services across industries, it said. Data localisation norms initiated by the government and regulators, which mandate storage of sensitive data within India, will also support development of local data centres, it said.
