India colocation data center industry to double to 1008 MW by 2023: Report

Mumbai and Chennai are expected to be the major DC hubs due to assured power supply, cable landings under the sea and large user markets. One of the biggest proponents for the development will also be the approval of a draft Personal Data Protection Bill by a joint parliamentary committee, which JLL believes will represent a major milestone for India’s colocation DC industry, Which provides IT infrastructure for large scale storage and computing needs. ,

“The importance of information in the form of data has gained prominence over the years with the entire digital revolution being driven by the use of data. The colocation industry is expected to benefit from the legislation due to the pre-requisite for data storage in the country. The potential is evident from the fact that three central legislations and four states have formulated policies for the data center sector, while four more states are in the process of notifying their policies,” said Rachit Mohan, Head, Data Center Advisory – India, Company – Head, Office Leasing Advisory – Mumbai, JLL.

The central government has underscored the importance of the region by formulating a data center park policy and creating four data center economic zones that aim to make India a global DC hub. The draft policy aims to give “infrastructure” status to the sector bringing in the benefits of availing long-term loans from domestic and international lenders.

“The growing digital economy has also necessitated regulations to protect the rights of Indian users by storing the details of digital transactions locally. The Reserve Bank of India has issued a directive to impose data localization requirements on service providers/intermediaries/third-party vendors and other entities in the payment ecosystem. The financial regulator has issued various directions for financial intermediaries to comply with the localization provisions. Local storage of digital transactions has already increased the demand for data centers from the BFSI sector,” said Samantak Das, Chief Economist and Head of Research and REIS (India), JLL.