Blackstone-backed Lumina buys 3.8 acre Mumbai land for Rs 475 cr to expand data centre play

Lumina plans to have around 600 MW in data centre capacity

Lumina CloudInfra, the data centre platform owned by private equity major Blackstone, has purchased two land parcels at Chandivali in Mumbai, measuring 3.8 acres, for a total of Rs 475 crore, according to registration documents accessed by real estate data analytics firm CRE Matrix.

The deals were registered on September 19. Lumina paid a stamp duty of around Rs 28.50 crore for the two transactions, made with two separate landlords, according to the registration documents.

This is slated to be Lumina's second site in the Mumbai market, with the firm working on building a data centre on a Navi Mumbai land parcel with a capacity of 180 megawatts (MW). Of that, 30 MW in capacity is ready for operations. The Chandivali site is expected to have a capacity of 60 MW.

Other than Mumbai, Lumina is planning to set up two data centres in southern India. The two sites are expected to have a total capacity of 240 MW, with the firm having another 120 MW in the pipeline for southern India. In total, Lumina may have an India capacity of 600 MW in the medium term.

The deals underscore moves by major data centre players, including hyperscalers and data co-location operators, to ramp up data centre capacity especially in the Mumbai metropolitan region, the largest data centre market in India. Lumina plans to spend around Rs 50,000 crore to set up its data centre portfolio in India, with Blackstone being the world's largest owner and provider of data centres. Blackstone has a global data centre portfolio worth more than $100 billion.

Besides Lumina, other data centre players, such as Hiranandani-owned Yotta, CapitaLand, Adani Connex, K Raheja Corp-backed Mindspace REIT, Larsen & Toubro-owned Cloudfiniti, RMZ, and Airtel's Nxtra, have announced major moves towards increasing data centre capacity in key markets like Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata.

Other than data co-location providers, hyperscalers such as Google, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft have continued to build up their data centre capabilities across most key markets.