STT GDC India emerges as a dominant player in the India DC market

•  Business India

STT Global Data Centres India Private Limited (STT GDC India), a market-leading Data Centre (DC) services provider, which offers carrier neutral colocation services and has the largest data centre footprint in the country, has been witnessing remarkable growth in the last few years. Formerly Tata Communications Data Centre, STT GDC India now commands 33 per cent market share in the Indian colocation market. A majority-owned subsidiary of Singapore-headquartered ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (which is wholly-owned by ST Telemedia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Singapore government’s investment arm Temasek), STT GDC India, backed by about 1,200 employees, manages the country’s largest raised floor area and critical IT load of about 110 MW (total power: about 200 MW), with 16 facilities (2.5 million sq ft) across eight major cities, serving over 1,000 customers, including many Fortune 500 companies.

In a rapidly changing market scenario, the company has shown a great deal of agility to proactively build a well-diversified customer portfolio, spanning global cloud/Internet players, carriers/Content Delivery Network (CDN) players, enterprise customers, e-commerce, banking and finance institutions and even the government. With location being critical for data centre operations, the DC major has also diversified geographically, looking at the demand and supply situation in a specific region. While major metro cites are the sought-after locations for DCs, STT GDC India is the only enterprise class data centre which is present in Ahmedabad. As India’s leading data centre operator, STT GDC India has been trusted with the mission-critical infrastructure of some of the largest organisations across diverse industries, including cloud service providers, media and content providers, and financial services institutions. The company, a joint venture between ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (74 per cent stake) and Tata Communications (26 per cent), operates three of the country’s largest data centre facilities – in Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru. The R1,200-crore company has grown at 25-30 per cent CAGR in the last five years, even as it is all set to maintain this momentum going forward as well, as it plans to more than double its capacity in the next two-three years, as part of its commitment to supporting the digital ecosystem in India.

‘We are inspired to remain as the leader in the Indian DC industry’ – Sumit Mukhija, CEO, STT GDC India

Its BKC Mumbai facility is Asia’s first and the country’s only CEEDA Gold Certified holder. The Certified Energy Efficient Data Centre Award (CEEDA) is an international certification, focussing on ongoing energy efficiency best practices and comprehensive data centre management of facilities and IT services. Its framework includes specifications drawn from ASHRAE, Energy Star, ETSI, EU CoC (the EU code of conduct) and The Green Grid. A majority of STT GDC India’s purpose-built DCs are IGBC LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) GOLD/CEEDA certified. The company has also obtained the Environmental Management System (EMS)-ISO 14001 certifications for all its data centre facilities. It has reduced its carbon footprint by sourcing renewable energy (wind/solar). Currently, 34 per cent of its power consumption is from renewable sources. Energy-saving becomes quite critical in the data centre operation, since energy contributes over 60 per cent of the operational cost. The data centre business is capital incentive, as it requires an investment of over R35 crore per MW of IT load (excluding the land cost) and the recovery time is over six-seven years.

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