Chennai to gain as data centres face curbs in Singapore – The New Indian Express

Express News Service

CHENNAI:  After Singapore put a temporary pause on data centres last year, companies are eyeing Chennai as demand for Over-The-Top services and Video on Demand (VoD) has peaked during the pandemic. National and international companies, including Yotta, Princeton Digital, ST Telemedia, Netmagic, and Adani, are in the process of setting up their data centres in Chennai. And many like DE-CIX India, a leading carrier and data centre neutral Internet Exchange (IX) operator, plans to expand their presence by adding three more data centres in the next 12 months.

“Currently, we have two data centres and plan to expand it to five in the next 12 months,” said Sudhir Kunder, country director, DE-CIX. “Name any data centre with international background, who is coming to India with an investment perspective, you will see that Chennai has to be one its destinations,” says Kunder. Many global players having headquarters in United States have been approaching DE-CIX,” says Kunder, who feels Chennai is now turning out to be his second home. 

 Tamil Nadu has six submarine data cables with a bandwidth of 14.8 Tbps (highest in the country), which encourages data centres to move its operations from Singapore to Chennai. As per TRAI, Chennai is  among the top five service areas in India for broadband subscriptions. After Singapore brought in moratorium on data centres as it consumes large amount of power, Chennai, being a landing centre, has been attracting global players, who are now moving their business to the southern Indian city.

 Reliance was the first to stream the OTT content (2018) and now India has over 40 players in a span of two years. This is due to the phenomenal growth of OTT platforms. During the last 19 months from February 2020 to August 2021, OTT and VoD grew by 1,676 percent on DE-CIX platform. Similarly, if you look at January-August data, growth was 1,39 per cent, he said.

 While normalcy is returning, the OTT demand has continued to grow. Similar is the case with online gaming, which has grown by 1,324 per cent in the 19 month period in DE-CIX platform. “Chennai will play a critical role for anyone’s expansion plans to get their businesses up and running,” says Kunder. 

But then power is going to be a issue. A typical data centre with a built-up space of 20,000 sq.mt. can house 60,000 servers and if one takes into account a land parcel of 50,000 square metres, it would amount to 1.5 lakh servers. The State has yet to become power sufficient like Singapore. 

Against the demand for 14,487 MW, the State is generating 5,224MW while importing 9,263MW of power. While the power managers are still struggling to ensure there is sufficient power during the coal crisis, the State has to come out with a strategy to ensure it becomes power sufficient to cater to global data centres.

India is home to 825 million internet users. During the pandemic, 65% of OTT consumption happened in the non-metro areas, highlighting demand for regional content
Sudhir Kunder, country director, DE-CIX