Singapore's Ascendas Property Fund Trustee Pte. Ltd., the trustee-manager of Ascendas India Trust (a-iTrust), on Monday said it will invest around Rs1,200 crore to develop and operate phase one its first data centre campus in India.

Located at Airoli, a growing data centre hub in Navi Mumbai, the 6.6-acre 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 square feet (sq ft) and 90 megawatts (MW) of power to host global technology giants and cloud service providers, and large domestic enterprise clients as well.

The acquisition of the site 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 mid-2024, will have a built-up area of about 325,000 sq ft.

Sanjeev Dasgupta, CEO 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 unit holders’ returns," Dasgupta added.

Demand for data centres in India has been on a rise due to improving technology infrastructure and increasing adoption of new technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud and the Internet of Things. 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 1,007MW by 20233.

He Jihong, CEO, Data Centre and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer, CapitaLand Group, said, “India’s rising data consumption and demand for quality solutions present a good opportunity for CapitaLand’s entry into the country’s burgeoning data centre market. We are acquiring the site for development of our first data centre in India following the recent acquisition of our first hyperscale data centre in China, one of the largest data centre markets in the world. We are stepping up our growth in data centres and accelerating expansion of the Group’s portfolio into new economy asset classes. With this new development in India, the Group’s investment in data centres this year has amounted to about S$1.7billion."

“We will continue to build and leverage our expertise in data centre design, development and operations across the regions. We look forward to working with our capital and business partners to expand our data centre portfolio in our core markets," she added.

The data centre campus site which a-iTrust is acquiring is situated in a prime location along Thane-Belapur Road, easily accessible from Mumbai city via the Eastern Express Highway.