Realtor Anant Raj signs pact to build and run data centers, shares trade higher

The cloud subsidiary of Anant Raj has signed an agreement to operate servers at its data centers

The cloud business subsidiary of real estate player Anant Raj has signed an agreement with global communications company Orange S.A., to seek operation services and establish servers at its data centers, the company informed stock exchanges on June 18. Shares of Anant Raj are buzzing on hopes of greater momentum in the data center business.

The India arm of Orange S.A. will design, build, operate services for Anant Raj arm's (ARC) cloud platform, the release said. The agreement will ensure setting up of servers for ARC's captive requirement at its data center. In addition to the support for the cloud business. The MoU requires Orange S.A. to also support and promote ARC's colocation data centre and cloud platform services to its existing and future customers too.

Shares of Anant Raj have seen a sharp spike in June, rising by nearly 48 percent so far this year.

Anant Raj had set up the data center business in September last year, with plans to retrofit three commercial projects into data centers at a capacity of almost 300 MW. It had also laid out plans of investing Rs 10,000 crore over four to five years, managing director Amit Sarin had told Moneycontrol.

At the start of the operations in September, experts had said that building a 1 MW data center costs almost Rs 55 crore, but since the land is owned by the company and it may cost them about Rs 25 crore to construct 1 MW. Power is critical for data centre customers who require enough electricity to operate thousands of servers and related IT hardware.

The Indian data centre market is expanding at a compounded annual growth rate of about 40 percent and is expected to attract about $5 billion of investments by 2025, according to a report by Avendus Capital.