A recent media report revealed that Google is on the verge of investing $10 billion to establish a 1-gigawatt (GW) data centre cluster in Visakhapatnam.
Google to Invest $10 Billion India
This holds a great significance as this would be marking the global technology giant’s first such investment in India, reportedly.
It appears that the details of the agreement are expected to be finalised between Google’s top executives and Andhra Pradesh IT and electronics minister Nara Lokesh in New Delhi on October 14.
This newly planned facility will comprise three data centre campuses at Adavivaram and Tarluvada villages in Visakhapatnam district and Rambilli village in Anakapalli district as per the report.
These facilities are slated to become operational by July 2028.
The construction of these cluster involves the installation and landing of three high-capacity submarine cables, the setting up of dedicated cable landing stations, high-capacity metro fibre lines, and telecommunications infrastructure as mentioned in the report.
Approval To This Landmark Investment
Moving ahead, the Andhra Pradesh State Investment Promotion Board which is chaired by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, is expected to clear the investment proposal on Wednesday.
This assignment is going to become the Google’s largest-ever direct investment in India’s digital economy.
In order to encourage the development of data cities, Naidu had proposed amendments to the Information Technology Act and Copyright Act earlier.
The Centre circulated a draft policy to provide a framework for data centres following this development.
In order to inspect various potential sites, Google’s Asia-Pacific team had visited Visakhapatnam during May this year and Lokesh personally escorting them.
When it comes to the proposed data centre, this cluster will form part of India’s first international AI infrastructure hub.
Basically, it is going to be a large digital infrastructure region concentrated within a specific geographical zone.
A Boom In Data Centre Demand In India
The property consultancy Anarock Capital recently revealed that the IT companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google together account for about 30 per cent of India’s data centre demand currently.
In coming future, this share is projected to increase to 35 percent reportedly.
The orders from major technology firms for ‘hyperscalers’ were still pending, as the companies were holding off on signing them for now, said Alok Bajpai, managing director of India for NTT Global Data Centers earlier.
Here mentioned Hyperscalers operate massive data centres which are specifically engineered for extreme scalability to handle large-scale workloads.
According to the India Ratings and Research, India’s data centre industry is anticipated to attract investments worth ₹1.6 trillion–2.0 trillion over the next five to seven years.
Reaffirming this development, the data centre companies have announced plans to add 7.1 GW of fresh capacity, but, nearly 60 percent of this is still at an early stage.
