ROW AFTER ROW of racks stacked with computer hardware like servers and data storage devices packed into a large, air-conditioned hall. These data centres are the organs that run the networks that power everything from sending a WhatsApp message to initiating online payments to streaming sports matches. They store, process, and manage large amounts of data.
And they’ve seen massive interest in recent years because of the breakneck speed of technological advances, particularly Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), which requires much higher amounts of computational power. That has sparked a global race to build more data centres. And in India, too, data centres are being built at a frenetic pace.
“The average size of the data centres increased from the 20–30 MW range to 50–101 MW. And data centres that are able to support the high power requirement of AI are being built now,” says Vivek Dahiya, Managing Director and Head of the Data Centre Advisory Team, Asia Pacific at Cushman & Wakefield, the global commercial real estate services firm. He adds that the demand
