Hyderabad: Microsoft and the Telangana government sealed a deal to set up a Rs 15,000 cr data center in Hyderabad. A 50-acre land near the city is earmarked for the project which is likely to create 300 jobs.
According to sources in the know of the development, an official announcement is likely in a month.
In 2016, Telangana came out with a data center policy in India, as a result, it is likely to attract investments of about $10 billion in the next 5 years.
Amazon Web Services in late 2020 had announced plans to set up its second data center hub in the country in Telangana at an investment of $2.77 billion.
Microsoft had said last year that it is planning to build around 50 to 100 new data centers each year in the near future. It operates around 200 data centers currently around the world.
In 2998, Microsoft India had aso set up a research and development (R&D) center in Hyderabad. It is one of the largest R&D centers by the company other than its Redmond headquarter in the USA.
Microsoft India had also entered into a pact with Reliance Jio in 2019 for a long term partnership to set up cloud data centers in India.
According to a JLL report, out of India’s current data center capacity, about 45 percent is based in Mumbai. It is followed by Chennai, Pune, and Bengaluru with 12 percent each, Delhi around 8 percent, Hyderabad around 7 percent and Kolkata around 1 percent.
Telangana is trying to narrow this gap through incentives for investors in the segment. Along with the quick government clearances and land availability, the state is offering cloud business to those who are establishing their data centers in the state.
In spite of being the nascent state in the country, Telangana succeeded in getting $33 billion investment during the last 7 years.
Through a single-window clearance introduced in 2014, the state has so far given approval to about 17,500 investment proposals. These have helped the state to take third place in 2019 from the 13th in 2015 in the “Ease of Doing Business index ranking”.
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