Equinix to open $86 million data centre in Mumbai

Equinix is set to build its first data centre in Mumbai through a $86 million investment, after acquiring its first two Indian data centres in 2021.

This will be its third data centre in the city, named MB3, which the company hopes will support India’s growing digital economy. The initial investment includes an acquisition of 4 acres of land.

Mumbai is regarded as one of India’s top data centre markets, with the region's capacity expected to grow over 2.5 times to nearly 530 megawatts (MW) by 2023, according to Equinix. The city also hosts a dozen subsea cable landing points, and has the highest number of cloud regions operated by global major cloud service providers.

The expansion aims to help Indian organisations enhance their digital transformation strategies and aid global companies to expand their operations in India.

“The increasing digitalisation of the economy is continuously driving the demand for data centre and interconnection services in India,” said Manoj Paul, managing director of Equinix India. “Particularly in Mumbai, the high demand for our digital infrastructure services among Indian and international customers is making us very optimistic about the market. We are focused on further investments in building the infrastructure in India to enable our existing and new customers in India to launch their services closer to their consumers.”

The company first entered the Indian market in 2021 when it acquired two data centres in Mumbai. Known as MB1 and MB2, they provide a total of 1,350 racks and are home to the digital infrastructure of over 270 international brands and local companies. Customers include cloud service providers, local carriers, over 165 internet service providers, and five internet exchanges.

The new data centre, MB3, will be located in Mumbai’s commercial district and situated next to the Equinix MB2 data centre, and 1.5 km away from the company’s other data centre in the city, the MB1.

The company said the new data centre is scheduled to open in Q2 2024, providing an initial capacity of 1,375 racks, reaching 4,150 racks in total when it’s fully built out.

“The close proximity of MB3 at Chandivali Farm Road to our existing data centres will enable us to form a robust campus so that our customers can leverage the dense ecosystems from any of our data centres in Mumbai,” added Paul. “This investment will also be supporting the government’s vision to make India a key data centre hub in South East Asia.”

Globally, Equinix operates over 240 data centres, providing digital infrastructure for more than 10,000 businesses. In the Asia-Pacific region, the company currently has 52 data centres across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.

In March 2022, Equinix also expanded to the Chennai market through a 5.5 acre land acquisition and $9 million investment. The company said that many of its customers are keen to expand beyond Mumbai, which is located on India’s western coast, and Chennai is often their next requested destination, located on the south-east coast.

Equinix is one of the new entrants eager to expand in India’s data centre market, which is set to be worth $10.09 Billion by 2027, according to research from Arizton The market is expected to double its capacity in the coming years, driven by strong digitalisation and an increase in cloud adoption.

The Indian government has also expressed an interest in making the country a global data centre hub. It’s currently drafting a national policy framework for data centres, which reportedly plans to offer incentives worth up to $1.9 million to expand the data centre ecosystem over the next five years, according to the Economic Times.