CtrlS aims to increase its data centre count to 25 in India by 2024-25

Hyderabad-headquartered CtrlS Datacenters is looking to triple its number of data centres from eight to about 25 by 2024-25. The company said that it is in the process of expanding its footprint by an additional 5 million square feet, from the current 1.2 million square feet space. 

CtrlS which began operations in 2007, today operates over one million square feet of data centre space in India, spread across eight data centres located in core technology hubs such as Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

As part of its India expansion plans, the company said in a statement that its two million square feet hyperscale datacenter park in Navi Mumbai is under construction, while another two million square feet Hyperscale Datacentre Park in Hyderabad is ready for construction. The company has also begun works on a one-million square feet data centre campus in Chennai. These three projects will cumulatively add over 600 MW capacity to CtrlS’ portfolio of assets, it said. 

“Altogether, we will add over 600 MW capacity in these locations and 5 million sq ft additional space. We are fully geared up to emerge as the world’s largest Rated-4 data centre player,” Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Chairman, CtrlS Datacenters Ltd, said, in a statement. 

“In addition to these large data centre parks, CtrlS Datacenters is also setting up a hyperscale data centre facility in Kolkata, which is a key gateway to Northeast,” he added.   

Besides, the company said that it is expanding its presence beyond India and is exploring opportunities in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. 

"We want to create world-class datacentres both in India and overseas. "Our global datacentres will have a capacity in the range of 10 MW to 50 MW," Pinnapureddy said.

India's data centre industry has been on a high growth trajectory reaching a 637 megawatt (MW) of capacity in the first half of 2022, a 16% rise compared to 551 MW in 2021, and is expected to reach 1318 MW by 2024, according to a study done by commercial real estate services company JLL India in August 2022.

It said that an increasing data usage in the financial, entertainment and retail domain and rise in the number of cloud service providers are driving India’s data centre growth, leading to demand for 7.8 million square feet real estate space by 2024. This will entail an investment of $4.6 billion, it said, adding that Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai comprise 75% of India’s data centre market, followed by Delhi-NCR, Pune, Hyderabad, and Kolkata, said the report.  

Another report published by Assocham-EY in September 2022, which projects India’s data centre market to grow to $8 billion by 2026 and stated that India has over 80 third-party data centres with a total count of approximately 130 (until August 2022). 

In the last one year, India has witnessed a massive data centre growth and expansion with several technology companies like Cisco, NTT Data, Equinix, Yotta Trellix, Web Werks, CtrlS and Vultre, among others, having set up their data centre operations in the country.