NTT to launch six data centres in next three months: India MD Sharad Sanghi

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NTT, the third-largest data centre provider in the world, will launch six data centres in India over the next three months, with three more in the works. Nearly 70% of the new capacity in these data centres has already been booked, said NTT India MD Sharad Sanghi.

The company currently has 11 operational data centres in the country and is set to launch six additional data centres by June. These new data centres will be located in Airoli and Mhape in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai.

NTT has invested about $4.5 billion in India since 2020, with the most recent tranche being a $2.5 billion MoU signed in Davos with Maharashtra to build data centres, submarine cables, and renewable energy plants in the state over the next five years.

“Demand for cloud migration and services both in India and globally has been strong. Only 20% enterprise workloads have migrated to the cloud in India and globally. There's a lot of headroom for growth. Companies are more multi-cloud today along with having their private clouds at the moment," Abhijit Dubey, Global CEO, NTT said.

NTT has about 22 percent market share for data centres in India.

NTT's $1 billion India opportunity

India is the second largest market for NTT in terms of employee base, including IT services and data centre business, generating around $500 million in revenue for the company, Dubey said. He added that the company is on track to cross $1 billion in revenue in India, without specifying a timeline.

With a current workforce of approximately 37,000 employees, India's employee base is second only to Japan, while NTT Group's global employee count stands at 350,000.

Speaking at a media roundtable, Dubey said, “India is a talent hub for us. Delivery capabilities for global clients are coming from India.”

"India has the highest growth rate in terms of demand for NTT's offerings. It's the eighth largest country by revenue as compared to the 70 countries NTT operates in," Dubey said.

One of the areas the company is betting big on outside cloud is edge computing. According to Dubey, NTT arrived in the edge computing space early and will be investing in building edge data centres in India too.

Some of these edge data centres in India will come up in Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Lucknow.

Edge computing refers to bringing data storage facilities or smaller data centres closer to the user or the clients' location unlike a regular data centre which will be spread over huge acres of lands at one distant location.

In 2020, the company had announced a $2 billion investment to build data centers in India. The fund was planned to be used for building six hyperscale data center parks, with three in Mumbai and one each in Chennai, Noida, and Bengaluru. Additionally, the company was planning to launch data centers in Tier-II cities due to increasing demand for data center services.