Data centres: India’s emerging asset class

01 Aug 2019 Editorial Team

A recent Colliers India investment report solicited responses from the top 40 institutional investors in the country to understand their investment priorities in 2019. Interestingly, 63 per cent of the investors ranked data centres as the most attractive emerging asset class. Ritesh Sachdev, Head, Occupier Services, India, and Managing Director, South, Colliers International India, attributes this to “the Indian Government emphasising the creation of a Cloud warehouse, with a focus on keeping data within India”.

“Interest in the Cloud is growing on the back of the Government’s thrust towards Digital India and the ever-increasing need for business innovation and agility, to scale fast in a competitive market,” affirms K Ashwin Kumar, Director, Linode Data Centre Operations India. He sees India’s 42.5 million SMEs/MMEs, the banking, financial services and insurance and healthcare sectors and government departments as key consumers of cloud services.

Data centres have been around in India for some time now, but it is only now that a large number of global data centre providers, private equity players, real-estate consultants and developers have realised the value of getting into the game, observes Praveen Nair, Sales Director, Bridge Data Centres. Nair attributes this interest to the emphasis on Digital India, the explosion in the usage of data services and the need for more scalable infrastructure with higher operating availability to enable online digital business.

As a result of all this activity, “data centres have been growing at 72 per cent,” says Dr Niranjan Hiranandani, Founder & Managing Director, Hiranandani Group. “We expect Digital India, Make in India and the push for data localisation to spur 100 per cent compound annual growth over the next five years.”

CHARU BAHRI

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