Ascendas Property Fund Trustee, the Trustee-Manger of Ascendas India Trust (a-iTrust) is pleased to announce that it will invest an estimated INR 12 billion (US$216.6 million) to develop and operate phase one of its first data centre campus on a prime site in India. It will be one of the largest data centre campuses in Airoli, a growing data centre hub in Navi Mumbai. The 6.6-acre greenfield site will be developed in phases into a fully-fitted data centre campus with a total potential built-up area of up to 575,000 sqft and 90 MW of power to host customers such as global technology giants and cloud service providers, as well as large domestic enterprise clients. The acquisition of the site from third-party vendors is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2021.
The data centre campus will comprise two buildings. In phase one, the first building – which is scheduled to be ready by 2Q 2024 – will have a built-up area of about 325,000 sqft. Sanjeev Dasgupta, Chief Executive Officer of the Trustee-Manager of Ascendas India Trust, said: “Our entry into the data centre sector in India will diversify a-iTrust’s portfolio into an attractive and highly scalable asset class. India has the second fastest growing digital economy in the world. The large market size combined with the increasing trends towards data localisation validates our market entry strategy. Developing our first data centre campus with support from our sponsor, CapitaLand, will allow us to leverage the CapitaLand Group’s data centre expertise and gives us complete control over the design and quality of the data centre. We look to improve our portfolio resilience through diversification into new economy
asset classes such as data centres and life sciences. As we grow further, we will continue to be prudent in our capital management and nimble in seizing investment opportunities, to maximise unitholders’ returns.”
Demand for data centres in India is rising due to improving technology infrastructure and
increasing adoption of new technologies like 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT). These factors are expected to result in an expansion of India’s total data centre capacity at a compound annual growth rate of 31% to 1,007 MW by 2023.
