Ascendas Property Fund Trustee to invest $217 million in new data centre in Navi Mumbai
Ascendas Property Fund Trustee Pte. will invest an estimated $216.6 million to develop and operate phase one of its first data centre campus in the country. The 6.6-acre greenfield site in Navi Mumbai will be developed in phases into a fully-fitted data centre campus with a total potential built-up area of up to 575,000 square feet and 90 megawatts of power to host customers such as global technology giants and cloud service providers, as well as large domestic enterprise clients.
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The acquisition of the site from third-party vendors is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2021. The data centre campus will comprise two buildings. In phase one, the first building, which is scheduled to be ready by the second quarter of 2024, will have a built-up area of about 325,000 square feet.
Stepping-up growth
Sanjeev Dasgupta, Chief Executive Officer of the Trustee-Manager of Ascendas India Trust, said: “Our entry into the data centre sector in India will diversify a-iTrust’s portfolio into an attractive and highly scalable asset class. India has the second fastest-growing digital economy in the world. The large market size combined with the increasing trends towards data localisation validates our market entry strategy. Developing our first data centre campus with support from our sponsor, CapitaLand, will allow us to leverage the CapitaLand Group’s data centre expertise and gives us complete control over the design and quality of the data centre.”
He Jihong, Chief Executive Officer, Data Centre, and Chief Corporate Strategy Officer, CapitaLand Group, said: “India’s rising data consumption and demand for quality solutions present a good opportunity for CapitaLand’s entry into the country’s burgeoning data centre market. We are acquiring the site for the development of our first data centre in India following the recent acquisition of our first hyperscale data centre in China, one of the largest data centre markets in the world. We are stepping up our growth in data centres and accelerating expansion of the Group’s portfolio into new economy asset classes.”