Mumbai records sharpest increase in data centre capacity across A-Pac: Knight Frank

Mumbai added 56 megawatt of supply Q1 2021 to clock the sharpest increase in data centre capacity across Asia Pacific region, global property consultancy Knight Frank said on Tuesday.

That took the financial capital’s total supply at 753MW, according to its latest report published in partnership with leading data centre research and analytics platform DC Byte.

The report cited that EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) markets have seen rise of 4 per cent in uptake in the Q1 2021, to 120MW with a 10 per cent increase in new supply overall, totalling to more than 180MW.

In Asia Pacific markets, total supply increased by about 200MW in Q1 2021, reflecting a similar pace to 2020 take up — recorded just over 800MW, making a total supply of 5800MW across the region.

Mumbai registered the sharpest increase supply. Pandemic influenced push for digital services resulted into an acceleration of new supply in 2020 with an additional 252MW or 50 per cent added to its development pipeline.

This marked up the total supply to 697MW in the year 2020. Between 2016 and 2019, Mumbai’s IT power capacity increased from 148MW to 456MW.

The Q1 report 2021, which provides comprehensive coverage of 28 key markets, tracked significant pandemic-driven data usage shift in 2020, which in turn magnified the traditional ‘buy’ cycle and led to record developments in the global data centres market.

This year the data shows it is apparent that while some markets have kept up with this pace others, mostly tier 2 cities have reported little supply growth in early 2021.

Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director at Knight Frank India, said Mumbai is among the better-established data centre hubs in A-Pac region. The city’s location has a strategic importance as a landing destination for undersea data-cables connecting the east and west.

The presence of an established telecom industry in India and the push for digital services during the pandemic has further fuelled the growth of data centres in Mumbai, said Baijal.

“The rise of emerging markets in A-Pac has brought Mumbai under the focus of multiple international operators who wish to establish themselves in this region,” he said.