Equinix Expands To Chennai With $65 Mn Data Centre, Eyes 3x India Revenue Growth
The company has invested USD 289 million in data centres in India since 2021 before expanding into Chennai
Digital Infrastructure company Equinix is set to make its mark in Chennai with the launch of its first International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre, CN1. Scheduled to open in Q4 2024, the new facility is designed to support the growing needs of enterprises and hyperscalers, including AI deployments.
The latest initiative from Equinix involves an initial investment of USD 65 million, contributing to a planned total investment of USD 125 million over this decade in India. The company’s expansion to Chennai is a step towards achieving an ambition of growing its revenues in the country threefold over the next three to four years.
Spanning nearly 6 acres in the tech-centric landscape of Siruseri, Chennai, CN1 will be a four-story facility capable of housing 4,950 cabinets. The first phase of this facility is set to launch in Q4 2024 and will offer 850 cabinets. The new data centre will be interconnected with Equinix’s three high-performance data centres in Mumbai, aimed at enhancing the robustness of digital infrastructure and ecosystems across India.
“We also are now focusing on AI, and we will keep closely track AI deployment in both Mumbai and Chennai. They are big data centres and can cater to the AI deployment,” Manoj Paul, Managing Director of Equinix India told BW Businessworld.
“Our architecture is totally geared to support AI deployment as and when the requirement comes in. We are just waiting to see whether it is 10 kilowatt per cabinet or a 100 kilowatt,” he added.
The company operates 260 data centres across 71 metros in 33 countries, serving over 10,000 of the world’s leading businesses. In the Asia-Pacific region, the company has 56 data centres in key metros across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Strengthening Presence In India
Equinix’s India focus is further evidenced by its huge investments in Mumbai. Recently, the company inaugurated a new IBX data centre, MB4, adding 350 cabinets to its existing infrastructure. Another data centre, MB3, is slated to open in Q4 2024, initially providing over 1,375 cabinets and eventually scaling up to more than 5,500 cabinets.
The company’s Mumbai facilities host over 300 companies, including around 200 network service providers and five internet exchanges. This ecosystem is the densest cloud infrastructure in India, offering on-ramps to major cloud service providers like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.
Equinix’s investments in India since 2021 include the acquisition of MB1 and MB2 data centres for USD 161 million, an initial investment of USD 86 million in the MB3 data centre, USD 42 million for the MB4 data centre
The company is now looking to expand to other metro cities up next. “As we expand to newer markets and new metros, we will see further growth in this country,” Paul revealed.
Equinix’s strategic focus on enabling multinational clients to deploy digital infrastructure seamlessly within India will reportedly play a pivotal role in this growth trajectory.
Paul also highlighted the strategic importance of India’s digital infrastructure growth and how Equinix planned to help with its contribution. “We believe that government is going to spend a lot on building the digital infrastructure for its own services and also providing a platform for Indian companies, especially the small and medium enterprises (SMEs).”
The data centre industry in India is on an upward trajectory, with capacity expected to double to around 2,000 MW by 2026. This expansion is anticipated to attract investments of approximately Rs 50,000 crore over the next three years, according to CareEdge Ratings.
