India primed to be a data center superpower

In a recent report, India finally overtook Japan and Singapore in terms of data capacity. If India plans to be a global tech player, then data centers will be integral to that. India has an area of 3.3 million sq km. Japan in contrast has 3.8 lakh sq km and Singapore a mere 736 sq km. It was embarrassing for India to be behind these two countries till last year.

Interestingly Mumbai, a city which is quite short of space like Japan and Singapore, takes the lead for data centers. Navi Mumbai has many plans via NAINA: Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area. NAINA aims to be a hub in many areas like IT, education, etc. After that we have prominent data centers in south India and NCR. Sometimes data centers are put in cold climates to bring down cooling and power costs. That also can be explored by the government for areas up north in the country. Data centers are power guzzlers, but off late India has gone a long way in achieving energy efficiency. We have made great progress in both fossil fuels and renewable energy. India has a long coastline, and this is handy in connecting data centers via undersea fiber optic cables.

Important for India

Data sovereignty is an extremely important issue, and it would benefit India if most of the indigenous data is stored in India and not abroad. India is a large country and the most populous in the world. It is a no-brainer that we should become a data center superpower, we have all the tools to do so. The Covid crisis laid bare the importance of business continuity and national security. Data centers also boost AI, ecommerce, AR/VR, streaming etc. This is one of the reasons why giants like AWS are looking to increase their footprint in India. India has allowed 100% FDI in ownership of data centers. Data centers will cater to high smartphone usage, which has penetrated even the villages, and the usage of tools like UPI. They will also give a fillip to things like Edge computing.