CtrlS plans to build 6 million square feet of top grade data centres by 2021

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Hyderbad-based CtrlS is planning to build six million square feet of tier-4 data centre by 2021 as it looks to capitalise on growth in data usage and proposed data localisation norms.

A tier-4 data centre has 99.995 percent uptime implying a maximum of 26 minutes downtime in a year.

The company's clients include Flipkart, SBI, Adani Group, Vodafone etc.

Around six months back, CtrlS announced to set up 4 million square feet of tier-4 data centres, including a 2 million sq feet hyperscale data centre in Hyderabad and 1 million sq feet of data centre each in Mumbai and Chennai.

CtrlS on May 7 said it will add another 1 million sq feet of data centre in Mumbai.

"CtrlS is investing in hyperscale capacities and will soon emerge as the largest tier-4 data centre player globally with a cumulative footprint of 5 million sq feet by 2021," Founder and CEO of CtrlS Datacenters, Sridhar Pinnapureddy, told PTI.

He said the impeding personal data protection bill combined with explosion of data due to social media, cloud, e-commerce, digitisation of data, Internet of Things (IoT), etc will require large capacities in India and CtrlS is gearing up to address this opportunity.

The company said it will invest Rs 2,000 crore in setting up 4 million sq feet of tier-4 data centres but did not share investment details for the new planned capacity of 1 million sq feet.

"Most of the investments for data expansion will be done through internal accruals while the rest of it would come through debt funding," CtrlS Datacenters Vice President BS Rao said.

A tier-4 data centre has 99.995 percent uptime implying a maximum of 26 minutes downtime in a year. It requires almost double the investment required for a tier-3 data centre, which can have a downtime of up to few hours in a year.

Rao said 5 million sq feet of data centres will need 500 megawatt of power for which the company will deploy solar systems to meet the energy need and contain carbon emission.