TCL to spend Rs1,200 cr on expanding Indian data centres

Tata Communications Ltd (TCL), today said it plans to invest $200 million (Rs1,200 crore) over a period of three years to double its data centre capacity in India.

"We plan to double capacity in India from 5 lakh square feet to 10 lakh sq ft," Rangu Salgame, chief executive of growth ventures at Tata Communications, said while announcing the launch of the company's second data centre in Delhi.

The new data centre in the Greater Kailash area of New Delhi is spread over 1 lakh sq ft.

"Typically a data centre takes approximately five years to reach to equilibrium with respect to capacity. However, in well-positioned and strategic locations it could be faster," Salgame said.

"For example, 95 per cent of the data that is there today was created in the last 12 months. So that's the scale at which data is exploding."

The company now has data centres at 44 locations globally. In India, Tata Communications has data centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and Pune.

He said the data centre market is growing in India at over 20 per cent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) year-on-year and Tata Communications business is growing a bit faster than the market rate.

Salgame further said that the economic growth of India is fuelling growth for the data centre business.

"Multinational companies who are doing well in India are also looking for storing data within the country," he said.

Salgame declined to name global companies using Tata Communications' data centre but said a global social media company is among those using its facility in India.

Tata Communications has deployed green technologies that can bring down operational cost of data centres like free cooling chillers, rainwater harvesting, solar power etc.

"For the overall data centre business in India, we have 26 per cent of our power coming from green source, which makes us the most green data centre company," Salgame said.