India’s largest data centre building, Yotta NM1, the largest tier IV data centre, certified by Uptime Institute in Asia, and the second largest in the world was inaugurated in the virtual presence of Uddhav Thackeray, Chief Minister, Maharashtra; Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice; and Subhash Desai, Minister of Industries and Mining.
“What makes the Yotta story unique is our ownership of all key input resources, massive economies of scale with our land banks, captive green energy generation and distribution capabilities and unmatched expertise and experience in data centre domain including design, engineering, construction and operations,” said Niranjan Hiranandani, MD and co-founder, Hiranandani Group.
“This data centre is a global pioneer not just in terms of capability and price but more so in terms of its focus on efficiency and sustainability. We provide the most efficient power offering available in the market today – not just the lowest price of power but also a power usage efficiency or PUE that is a global benchmark for the tropics,” said Darshan Hiranandani, group CEO – Hiranandani Group.
In the second half of 2019, Hiranandani announced setting up of Yotta Infrastructure, a Hiranandani Group subsidiary and a managed data centre service provider, which would develop hyper-scale data centre parks in India.
The initial stage is termed as Phase zero. The plan is to migrate to renewables and gas-based combined heat and power generation on site will provide chilled water at the most efficient cost structure possible and will bring design PUE numbers down to 1.2 – again unheard of in Indian weather conditions. But the plan does not stop there; it includes building facilities today to ensure that can be future ready, to run 100% on renewables whether offsite through solar and wind coupled with on-site hydrogen based co-generation and fuel cells in the future.
Hiranandani has ambitious plans of potentially investing about Rs 3500 crores in data centre business across Navi Mumbai and Chennai to begin with. The group has already invested Rs 1000 cr in its first data centre going live at our Hiranandani Fortune City township in Panvel. He attributes the initial interest in the segment to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who spoke about a ‘digital India’.
Beginning with Panvel, where Yotta’s growth plans began with building of the data centre park – the country’s largest, spread over 18 acres, comprising five data centres and 30,000 racks.
The COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown and work from home (WFH) have multiplied digital and online transactions, these all reflect in incremental demand at data centers, be it to power collaborative tools like Zoom; usage of enterprise tools like SAP or net banking, as also on the consumer side, OTT platforms for entertainment like Netflix, Hotstar, etc. There is a 30% hike in data centre capacity usage, and even after the situation returns to ‘normal’, the work style will continue to be data centre driven, and demand growth will continue.
