Yotta Infrastructure, a Hiranandani Group subsidiary and a Managed Data Centre Service Provider developing hyper-scale data centre parks in India, today inaugurated India’s largest data centre building, Yotta NM1, in a virtual event in the presence of Uddhav Thackeray, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice, Govt of India and Subhash Desai, Minister of Industries and Mining, Maharashtra. It is the largest Tier IV Data Center certified by Uptime Institute in Asia and second-largest in the world.
With proximity to Mumbai and Pune, Yotta NM1 Data Center is located in the 600-acre Hiranandani Fortune City in Panvel. Yotta NM1 is first of the five data centre buildings coming up at this Integrated Yotta Data Center Park, which, once fully built, will have an overall capacity of 30,000 racks and 250 MW power. At 8,20,000 sq. ft, 7,200 racks, 50 MW of power and four redundant self-owned fibre paths connecting the DC to national highways, the first DC Yotta NM1 itself offers a highly scalable data centre infrastructure, capable of hosting global cloud, content and OTT operators besides the mission-critical applications of enterprises and governments. The ultramodern building, supported by a highly redundant on-site power infrastructure shall soon be powered by its own captive solar power plant and an on-site captive gas-based co-gen power plant thus delivering to its hosted customers long term reliable, green and cost-effective source of power.
Speaking at the virtual event, Shri. Uddhav Thackeray, Hon. Chief Minister, Govt. of Maharashtra, reiterating the importance of Data Centers said, “Govt of India said, Covid-19 has made the digital future into reality and given us a new perspective on life. The Maharashtra government is inviting investors to come to our state to do business here and we will extend all support and cooperation to them. We’ve launched the Maha Jobs portal just yesterday for job seekers from the state and also to facilitate workers for industries to act a bridge between employers and employment seekers. By the evening we received thousands of applications and it is a great example of the power of Digital. Working from home has also been made possible by a robust digital infrastructure even in the face of a pandemic and the Hiranandani’s are enabling work of the future today with Yotta Infrastructure. The government of Maharashtra will extend all support towards this endeavour.”
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Hon. Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice, Govt of India said, “A good data centre infrastructure is critical for a robust digital economy and with this data centre the Hiranandani Group has yet again delivered on their standards of creating a new benchmark in every industry that they operate in. Under the vision of the Honorable Prime Minister we have launched the Digital India initiative – to empower the country with technology, bridge the divide and bring digital inclusion, and all of this must be achieved through technology that is homegrown. This particular data centre is a powerful statement of intent that India is rising high in the quest of data security, data use and data innovation. For the success of Digital India, we must become a big global Data Refinery – data cleaning, data processing, data innovation and research – and all of this will need to be done keeping in mind data privacy laws. We shall never compromise on the data sovereignty of India. The data economy has a lot of potential and in all its promise – a good data centre is the pillar it builds on.”
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With the pandemic fast-tracking the digital transformation efforts across enterprises and mass transition to remote working, Canalys Global reported that cloud spends were at a record high in Q12020, up 34% during the time. As enterprises increase their dependency on cloud services, and as India becomes increasingly digital, shifting speedily to web collaboration, e-commerce, e-payments, emerging technologies like AI, ML, IoT, Robotics, connected cars, and as 5G adoption permeates, the resultant growth in generated data is humongous and requires a massive buildout of evolved data processing and storage facilities i.e. data centres. Initiatives under the Digital India campaign are further accelerating the growth in India’s data centre industry.
Commenting on the development, Dr Niranjan Hiranandani, Co-founder and Managing Director of the Hiranandani Group, said, “Enterprises and Governments are now focusing more than ever before on Self-Reliance (“Atmanirbhar“) in their supply chains within the country, also leading to more emphasis on data privacy/protection and consequently on data localisation. The demand for hyper-scale data centres is on the rise, thanks to the Government’s push for the National E-commerce Policy and proposed policy on Data Center Parks. Also, with the new normal established due to COVID-19, reliance on technology from enterprises and consumers has increased. All these factors together make for a tremendous growth story for data centres in India. What makes the Yotta story unique is our ownership of all key input resources, massive economies of scale with our land banks, captive green energy generation and distribution capabilities and unmatched expertise and experience in Data Center domain including design, engineering, construction and operations.”
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“This data centre is a global pioneer not just in terms of capability and price but more so in terms of its focus on efficiency and sustainability. We provide the most efficient power offering available in the market today – not just the lowest price of power but also a Power Usage Efficiency or PUE that is a global benchmark for the tropics. That is only phase zero (0). Our plan to migrate to renewables and gas-based combined heat and power generation onsite will give us chilled water at the most efficient cost structure possible and will bring our design PUE numbers down to 1.2 – again unheard of in Indian weather conditions. But we do not plan to stop there. We are building facilities today to ensure that we can be future-ready to be 100% run on renewables whether offsite, through solar and wind coupled with onsite hydrogen-based co-generation and fuel cells in the future.”, said Darshan Hiranandani, Group CEO – Hiranandani Group
Besides Navi Mumbai, Yotta is also developing similar-sized giant Data Center Parks at Chennai and New Delhi. Each of these parks will feature more than 20,000 racks, 200 MW plus power and multiple self-owned fibre paths connecting the Park to the main highways. Yotta envisages spending about INR 3500 crores in next 3 years and about INR 15,000 crore over the next 7 to 10 years across these Data Center parks.
Sunil Gupta, Managing Partner & CEO – Yotta Infrastructure, said, “Foreign hyper-scale cloud players and OTT companies are looking to set up large bases in India. A hyper-scale Data Centre Park with the scalable ecosystem of power, fibre and skillsets, like what Yotta offers, gives them quick access to large colo capacity from day one from a multi-tenanted data centre like NM1 and also gives them long term sustainability at the same site with the availability of customised single tenanted data centres and in-campus fibre networks. Enterprises can expect from Yotta a fully managed hybrid IT infrastructure – a combination of colo, private cloud, public cloud and IT management skills on a low-risk, pay-as-you-use model, that creates a win-win situation for everyone. Yotta hit the ground running within a year, and I am pleased to say that the interest garnered by Yotta from enterprises has been overwhelming. We are pleased to house many anchor customers at Yotta NM1 already, and the list will only continue to grow.”