Equinix invests $9 million to acquire land in Chennai for new data center.

The US-headquartered data center firm Equinix has announced an investment of over $9 million to acquire 5.5-acre land in Chennai on a long-term leasehold basis.

The parcel of land is located in the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd. (SIPCOT) IT Park. It is located in the Siruseri area, which is known as the IT Corridor of Chennai, with large and upcoming IT parks and well-established telecom networks.

“India is well positioned to grow as one of the most important data center hubs in South Asia. There is a lot of momentum and interest from large global players to establish and expand their footprint in India. Many of our customers are keen to expand beyond Mumbai, and Chennai is often their next requested destination,” said Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India.

With a strategic location, access to subsea cable landing stations, stable power supply and thriving IT infrastructure, Chennai is steadily emerging as a data center hub, and has made it to the top ten markets to watch in the world, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s 2021 Global Data Center Market Comparison report.

Equinix plans to set up a new data center in Chennai in the next few quarters. At the moment, the data center operator didn't disclose the IT load capacity of the Chennai unit. The existing IT capacity of Equinix in India is 8.5MW (in Mumbai).

“In the next few weeks we will be able to finalize how much investments we are going to make, what our capacity will be, and how many people we will hire,” he added.

Presently, India has around 499 MW installed power capacity for data centers and is projected to grow to 1007 MW by 2023.

For the Chennai site, Equinix aims to maintain an uptime of 99.9999 percent which is the company’s global average.

Equinix made its official India foray last September through the acquisition of the India operations of GPX Global Systems for $161 million. The deal included the acquisition of two Mumbai-based data center buildings of GPX.

The two data centers in Mumbai are home to the digital infrastructure of numerous global organizations and provide a total of 1,350 cabinets.

Paul also told ETCIO that in the last six months (since India operations began), Equinix has received more than 20 orders from international customers who did not even visit the facility or asked for detailed analysis of the data center structure. “This is because of the trust they have with our brand. Customers across the globe know if they are partnering with Equinix, all the standards are being maintained”

Talking about Equinix’s future plans for India, Paul said a bigger portion of APAC growth will come from India. Equinix is keen about the Indian market. “The policies are very favorable and the economy is doing well. Our expansion plans here will inline with what we have in countries like Australia.

With having presence in more than six cities in Australia, it is among the largest APAC markets for Equinix

Equinix also launched a Global Center of Excellence (GCoE) in India, which will provide customers and employees with automated digital technologies to improve the resilience of their digital infrastructures. For its GCoE, the company plans to hire approximately 500 IT professionals in Bengaluru by the end of 2024.

ET