Equinix Grows India Footprint With $65M Chennai Data Centre

Equinix on Tuesday announced its further expansion in India with the digital infrastructure giant’s first data centre project in Chennai and fifth overall in the country.

With an initial investment of $65 million, the data centre will span nearly 6 acres (2.4 hectares) in Chennai’s southern Siruseri suburb and is set to open in the fourth quarter of this year, NASDAQ-listed Equinix said in a release. Dubbed CN1, the facility is designed to support the needs of enterprises and hyperscalers, including AI deployments.

The new development follows last June’s launch of Equinix’s fourth Mumbai data centre, a $42 million project interconnected with some of the US company’s existing facilities in the commercial capital.

Strong interest from global players is driving India’s growing status as a pivotal data centre hub in South Asia, said Equinix India managing director Manoj Paul.

“Equinix has the most hyperconnected data centre campus in Mumbai with the largest concentration of cloud on-ramps, telecom service providers, over-the-top media service providers, internet exchanges and financial ecosystem,” Paul said.

Submarine Cable Link

CN1 will occupy land of the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) in the Siruseri area. The location is 28 kilometres (17.4 miles) from Chennai’s central business district and holds a key position near future submarine cable landing sites, Equinix said.

The four-storey data centre is expected to provide 4,950 cabinets when fully built, with 850 planned in the initial phase. No power capacity figures were disclosed.

Equinix recently opened the MB4 facility, adding 350 cabinets in Navi Mumbai. The company also announced MB3, scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of this year, providing an initial capacity of more than 1,375 cabinets in Mumbai’s Andheri East.

Equinix operates 260 data centres worldwide and has 56 projects in Asia Pacific. In March, the group came under fire by short seller Hindenburg Research, which alleged manipulation of key accounting metrics. Equinix has defended its financial reporting, and the company’s stock is down about 10 percent since Hindenburg revealed its short bet.

Chasing 3GW

With a development pipeline of 2.9 gigawatts, India is on track (along with Japan) to join China as APAC’s only markets to exceed 3GW of operational capacity in the next five years, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.

A joint venture of Digital Realty, Brookfield Asset Management and India’s Reliance Industries unveiled a 100-megawatt campus in northwestern Chennai’s Ambattur neighbourhood in January as the JV’s inaugural data centre in the world’s most populous country. The project broke ground the following month.

Also in January, Singapore-based Digital Edge entered the Indian market by setting up a joint venture with Singapore’s AGP Sustainable Real Assets and a state-backed investor to build a portfolio of hyperscale facilities including a $2 billion facility in Mumbai.

In April, a joint venture of Adani Enterprises and EQT-backed EdgeConneX announced that it had secured financing from lenders of up to $1.44 billion to build data centres.