CtrlS plans to double headcount in 3-4 yrs, expand footprint to 22 Indian cities

CtrlS launched a data center park in Chennai on Wednesday. The park has two data center facilities — DC 1 and DC 2, with an overall capacity of 72 MW. It will create 500 direct and 9,000 indirect jobs. With the new facility, CtrlS now has 15 data centers in 10 cities, including Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Patna, and Lucknow, among others. 

The Chennai data center park has been built with a direct investment of ₹4,000 crore (~$480 million). The company also said that an indirect investment of ₹50,000 crore ($6 billion) from customers who would be leveraging the facility’s colocation services.

“The facilities are the tallest in the world and the largest in the region. DC1 is specially designed for a hyperscaler customer, and with DC2, the focus is on establishing AI labs and providing full-scale AI engineering services to enterprises. It will also function as a cloud node, an interconnect hub, and the home to all major internet exchanges,” Sridhar Pinnapureddy, founder and CEO of CtrlS told TechCircle. 

The Chennai data center park launch follows a memorandum of understanding signed between the Telangana government and CtrlS last month. Under the collaboration, the company is investing ₹10,000 crore to build a data center facility near Hyderabad. Pinnapureddy also told TechCircle that the company plans to establish another center in Mumbai going forward.

To be sure, CtrlS announced a $2 billion investment plan in 2023 to expand its operations and double its capacity. The investment is intended to create AI and cloud-ready hyperscale data centers. Of this, $300 million has already been spent in the last 12 months, Pinnapureddy said. "About $700-800 million comes from internal accruals, an equal amount is raised through debt, and the remaining portion is being secured through equity,” he said when asked about the financial model.

CtrlS in its recent financial cycle has clocked a revenue of $450-500 million. “We have grown 28% over the past five years, maintaining a strong trajectory even before that. Looking ahead, we expect to sustain a growth rate of 20-25%, with a projected 50% growth by the end of FY26. Our key focus areas include cloud, content, BFSI, and enterprise. AI is a significant growth driver, it is one of three core pillars shaping our business along with Cloud and enterprise demand.”

He added that government-mandated data localization requirements have significantly impacted the business. “Many foreign banks have entered the market due to these regulations while existing customers have expanded their capacity to align with compliance needs. All major cloud providers were already present, and certain segments of social media have also established a presence."
Pinnapureddy said that the company also plans to double its current workforce of 4,000 employees in the next 3-4 years.

Notably, CtrlS is one of the 19 vendors who bid for the compute infrastructure in the India AI Mission. As per media reports, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has shortlisted 10 vendors to procure 14,000 GPUs. While firms like Yotta Data Services, E2E Networks, Tata Communications, and AWS’s managed service providers will provide 10,000 of these GPUs, the remaining is expected to be procured through companies such as Jio Platforms and CtrlS Datacenters.

While Pinnapureddy did not confirm or deny the reports, he said the company hopes to add value to India AI Mission from a use case perspective instead of purely GPU and infrastructure play. 

Note: The author was in Chennai on CtrlS' invitation.