Why Chennai’s data centre market is thriving

Chennai is India’s second-largest data centre market. With a colocation capacity of 88 MW, the city is well positioned for the digital economy of the future. ET finds out more:

What’s favouring Chennai

Resilience, adaptability, continued infra development and strategic policies

KEY DRIVERS

• Six cable landing stations
• Steady power supply
• Good talent pool

Hubs

The city has two data centre hubs—Ambattur and Siruseri


The over 20-km distance between them makes it possible for cloud players to adopt a three-site strategy with the emergence of a new data centre zone

Major players

• CtrlS Datacenters
• Web Werks
• Yotta Infrastructure
• Adani Enterprises

High return

With a buildand-sell model, developers can achieve more than 25% IRR (internal rate of return)

Future growth

New cable landings expected to fuel growth of data centre hubs

$1.54 billion

Likely investments to come into data centre hubs over 2 years, or 27% of overall investment in India

Projected CAGR over 3 years

26%

India’s data centre market growth

1,011 MW India’s data centre capacity, nearly doubled from 2019

City concentration

About 94% of data centre capacity is in India’s top seven cities

Chennai expected to contribute about 25% of the new capacity over the next five years

Hyperscaler Expansion

Global hyperscalers are expanding in India, favouring an ‘own and operate’ model

AI Demand

Demand for India’s AI-enabled data centres is projected to reach ~500 MW in four years