Reliance Jio planning to build data centre in Uttar Pradesh with $950 million investment: Report

Reliance Jio is planning to set up a data centre spread across 20-acre in Uttar Pradesh with an investment of about $950 million, Hindustan Times reported citing two people aware of the development. This data centre is expected to be powered by the telco’s own renewable energy plant.

“This is an important focus area for Reliance Jio,” one of the two people cited above informed the publication.

“For the data centre, a 20-acre plot had been allotted to the company, and the project is to cost approximately Rs 7,000 crore,” Sidharth Nath Singh, who heads the ministries of investment and export, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and textile in the UP government, said in a statement in response to a Mint query.

“The centre will consist of six interconnected data centre buildings offering 30,000 racks capacity and 200MW of power. It is expected to generate thousands of job opportunities in IT (information technology) sector,” Singh said in the statement.

This comes in the backdrop of the government’s aspirations to boost India’s digital economy to $1 trillion by 2025.

Furthermore, the Reserve Bank of India’s norms on data localisation has necessitated the need for local data centres.

Jio, however, did not confirm the development.

The Adani Group has also formed a 50:50 joint venture with US-based data centre operator EdgeConneX to build hyperscale data parks in the six cities and edge centres pan-India.

According to the government, India has around 375MW installed power capacity for data centres, which may triple by 2025. Also, there is a $4.9 billion investment opportunity by 2025 to set up data centre infrastructure, the report said.

A policy for establishing data centre parks is also in the works, including providing infrastructure status which will unlock a range of benefits such as long-term credit and other related incentives.

“With an aim to take UP to an unprecedented level, the Adityanath government has embarked on a mission to make it a $1 trillion economy by 2024. To achieve this target, the state has identified 5 sectors—infrastructure development, industry, agriculture, urban development and service sectors,” Singh added.