Engineering and construction giant L&T is developing new data centres in Panvel, Mhape near Mumbai and Bangalore with a total capacity of 90 megawatts (MW).
Currently, it has 32 MW of capacity across its data centres in Chennai and Panvel near Mumbai.
In a video call with media on Thursday, Seema Ambastha, chief executive of L&T Cloudfiniti (data centre business) said that the 8MW capacity in Chennai is sold out and going live and 2MW at Panvel is also sold out.
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Ambastha said typical leases are around 3-5 years and those for built to suit (BTS) are for 15-20 years. “You will put investment in land, civil, MEP and operational costs,” she said.
Typically, a tier-III data centre needs Rs 30-40 crore per MW and cities such as Mumbai have little variation. The company is likely to spend Rs 3,600 crore on the new centres.
On new players such as Blackstone, Hiranandani and others entering data centres , Ambastha said there is enough demand in the country.
“All players are doing their leasing bit .It does not matter if there are 15 players. There is enough demand. you have to build right product,”she said.
She added there is a tremendous amount of growth in digital, AI , cloud storage etc and so service providers have to respond to this growth with the right product for the right market.
“Data centre is not a standard product but tailored to the market demand,” she said.
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On funding expansion, she said that the books are large enough to accommodate the capital needs but did not rule out partnerships.
“..we are not personally averse to joint venture with private equity as a SPV(special purpose vehicle) to build for specific need or client. Our capex comes from L& T corporate. We don’t see a need for leverage or debt,” she said.
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