India’s Adani Group forms JV with EdgeConneX to develop data centres

Adani EdgeConneX data centres
Image by Kwarkot | Bigstockphoto

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani-led Adani Group’s enterprise arm has formed an equal joint venture with US-based data centre operator EdgeConneX, called AdaniConneX, intending to build hyperscale data parks with 1GW of data centre capacity in the country.

The JV will develop and operate data centres throughout India, leveraging the two partners, complementary expertise and capabilities. It has begun developing hyperscale facilities in Chennai, Navi Mumbai, Noida, Vizag and Hyderabad and will also develop scalable edge data centres across the country.

Both companies will invest “significant capital” into the joint venture over the next decade to build out India’s leading green data centre platform to address the rapidly growing need for high- quality and reliable IT infrastructure.

As per recent media reports, Reliance Jio is also planning to invest around $950 million for setting up a large data centre in the Uttar Pradesh state.

“India currently has one of world’s largest data subscriber population and to address the need for a reliable infrastructure to support Cloud, Content, Network, IoT, 5G, AI and enterprise requirements, data centres are a fundamental infrastructure need of a nation,” Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group said in a joint statement.

Adani said that his group already offers green power, real estate expertise, access to undersea cable landing stations, and several nodes across the country to serve as edge locations.

The JV’s Edge data centres portfolio will be strategically located throughout India that will support the need for more proximate capacity.

The company said that these Edge data centres sites would be designed to scale with demand and become full-scale data centre campuses easily. 

This pan-Indian platform of hyperscale and hyperlocal data centres will largely be powered by renewable energy, as per the official statement.

“In Adani, we have the ideal partner in India…they possess the necessary capabilities and unique expertise in India required to build out critical digital infrastructure that can best support our customers across the entire country,” said Randy Brouckman, CEO of EdgeConneX, in a joint statement.

“We look forward to investing in the digital economy of India and meeting our customers’ needs throughout the region in collaboration with Adani,” Brouckman added.

India’s data centre space is seeing increased traction from various companies. Bharti Airtel, NTT Global Data Centers, Pi DATACENTERS, Rack Bank, Sify Technology, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) and many other companies have announced their big-ticket investment in the space in the last few quarters.

The Indian government’s mandate for storing data locally pushing the need for the data centre capacity.

India’s data centre space received $977 million in private equity and strategic investments since 2008, of which nearly 40% was infused in the January-September 2020 period alone, as per a recent study by Anarock. India currently has 126 third-party data centres spanning over 7.5 million sq ft.

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