Yotta data centre in Greater Noida expected to boost commercial real estate in the region: Niranjan Hiranandani

The launch of the hyperscale data centre in Greater Noida by Yotta Infrastructure, an arm of the Hiranandani Group, will attract investments from organised real estate players and boost commercial real estate in the region, Niranjan Hiranandani, the company’s chairman and managing director, told Moneycontrol.

“It will boost commercial real estate, the IT sector and have a huge multiplier effect in terms of generating jobs in the region,” he said.

“Data itself will be part of the $1-trillion economy. When we move from the 4G to the 5G application, the requirement of data will increase a thousand-fold and the speed at which you will receive data streaming will be unbelievable. As on date, 85 percent of data in India is standing abroad. This needs to return to India and a facility like the one set up by Yotta Infrastructure in Greater Noida will make all the difference,” he added.

Huge investment

Data centre company Yotta Infrastructure will be investing Rs 39,000 crore in Uttar Pradesh over the next five-seven years. The Hiranandani Group firm committed the investment under a memorandum of agreement signed with the Uttar Pradesh government on October 31. The investments will go towards constructing the data centre campus, procuring IT equipment and other hardware by Yotta and its customers.

The first building has been completed and was launched by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on October 31. Work on two other buildings is expected to be completed in 12-15 months.

The company has set up a hyperscale data centre, Yotta D1, at its Greater Noida Data Center Park, with an investment of around Rs 1,500 crore. Each data centre will cost Rs 6,500 crore. The committed investment is for six data centres.

Yotta D1 has the capacity to house 5,000 racks across seven server floors and offers fail-safe 48-hour power backup on full load. The facility, spread across 20 acres, will offer a total capacity of 30,000 racks, four dedicated fibre paths and an IT power capacity of 160 megawatt.

It should be noted that there has been a significant increase in overall investments proposed by companies in Noida alone in the past five years. According to official data, the investments jumped from Rs 1,184 crore in the 2017-2018 financial year to Rs 6,745 crore in 2021-22. Land allotment in 2017-2022 has also jumped to 200 hectares from 63 hectares in the 2012-2017 period.

Corporate giants setting up shop

Software companies such as  Tata Consultancy Services have been allotted land in Sector 157. The Adani Group has been allotted two land parcels in Noida, one in Sector 62 measuring over 34,000 square metres and another in Sector 80 measuring 73,421 sq m. IKEA has also been allotted land in Sector 51. Microsoft has been allotted a 60,000 sq m land parcel in Sector 145.

Hiranandani told Moneycontrol that the trend was started by his company when it decided to invest in the 20-acre land parcel in Greater Noida to set up the data centre in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We set the precedent. All these companies came in after we decided to invest in Greater Noida. We have managed to complete the data centre within 20 months of taking over the land,” he said.

Asked if the entry of organised real estate majors in Greater Noida will have an impact on how the sector is perceived in the region, especially after the Unitech, Amrapali and Jaypee fiascos, Hiranandani made it clear that the launch of the data centre relates more to commercial real estate and the IT sector than pure-play residential space.

“While several residential projects were launched in the region many years ago, there was a problem in Noida and Greater Noida in terms of development and there was a failure of large number of projects due to different reasons — a large number of projects have been stalled, and some have gone into difficulties, such as Unitech, Amrapali and Jaypee Infratech,” he explained.

Also, the entry of an individual organised builder in the Noida and Greater Noida  region will not make that much of a difference, but if several invest, they could bring about a change in the paradigm, he added.