Yondr, Everstone ink JV to invest over $1 billion in India to develop, operate data centers

Global data centre major Yondr Group has entered into a strategic joint venture with Singapore-based Everstone Group to invest over $1 billion to develop and operate data centers across India.

The investment will be used to fund the development and operation of multi-locational hyperscale data center business across important geographies in India, including the metros of Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi-National Capital Region.

Starting with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the venture will deliver a portfolio of facilities at hyperscale, significantly propelling India’s IT and power capacity to meet the growing demand from public cloud providers and end users at scale.

“EverYondr’s early acquisition of its first campus in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region reinforces our commitment to the region. Unlike other mature hyperscale markets, data centers in India require a proactive approach to development and a streamlined delivery process. As a business, our mission is to help clients meet their data center capacity and technical real estate needs, faster and with better performance outcomes than anyone else,” said Dave Newitt, CEO, Yondr Group.

As part of the partnership, the joint venture has already acquired a land parcel for its first data center project in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Operating under the brand name EverYondr, this first facility located in the Mumbai region, for which power supply apart from land has also been secured, will deliver 30MW by 2023 and 60MW of IT capacity when fully developed.

“To meet the accelerated pace of cloud adoption, hyperscale companies are increasingly looking to credible partners to help realise their expansion needs. Yondr’s global experience combined with Everstone’s strong execution capabilities in India, will provide clients with a credible and consistent choice,” said Sameer Sain, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Everstone Group.

Data centers in India are emerging as the most attractive growth opportunity for global institutional investors and leading developers. Investments are flowing into the data centre markets, with multiple new markets created simultaneously, along with the rapid development of campus sizes found in the most established global cities.

So far, a total $13.5 billion investment has been planned and committed for data centers development in the country and global firms’ contribution out of this is more than 70%, showed data from Cushman & Wakefield.

Leading global entities including STTelemedia, ESR, NTT, Colt and Princeton Digital Group, Brookfield Asset Management and Digital Realty have already started investing in this space.

In recent years India has undergone significant digital transformation, with active internet user numbers reaching 525 million in 2019, representing an annual growth of over 19%. Low-cost smartphones and cheap data tariffs have further compounded the shift to digital, with data consumption increasing 37-fold, from 0.26GB to 9.8GB per user between 2014 and 2018.

With a population of more than 1.3 billion and data consumption per user forecast to reach 18GB per user by 2024, India represents a major market opportunity, surpassed only by the US and UK.