Equinix open to expanding operations in more Indian cities if demand arises

Chennai: California-based digital infrastructure company Equinix opened its first data centre in Chennai last week – its second in India after Mumbai. The company is also open to expanding its operations to other cities such as Bengaluru, New Delhi, and Hyderabad, as it continues to monitor demands from its customers across the country, Manoj Paul, Managing Director, India of Equinix Inc, told DH.

The company chose Mumbai and Chennai not just because of several submarine data cables landing in the two cities, but also because of massive consumer demand for data centers in India, he informed. In a conversation with DH, he added that Phase I of the Chennai facility, which has been built at a cost of Rs 608 crore ($69 million) over two years, will boast 800 cabinets – a number that will eventually expand to 4,200 cabinets over the next four to five years. 

“Our customers will start occupying the space in the next few weeks, and, in fact, we came to India due to high demand from our customers. It will take about four to five years for us to complete all four phases, but it all depends on customer demand. If it is faster, then we will deploy it faster,” Paul said. 

The data centre, which has been built on six acres of land at an industrial estate owned by the State Industries Promotion Corporation of India (SIPCOT) in Siruseri, is engineered for a high reliability of 99.999% uptime and features a full suite of Equinix interconnection services, including Equinix Fabric, which enables enterprises to leverage the full benefits of hybrid, multi-cloud services. 

Paul said the centre’s advanced design also enables support for liquid cooling technology, which is essential for handling the high-density, compute-intensive workloads that are driving AI and other transformative technologies. 

When asked whether the company chose Chennai because of the huge bandwidth the city boasts, Paul said the company wanted to be somewhere in South India, which includes large economies like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. 

“Our customers have deployments in Mumbai and Chennai, and they connect globally through our office. Many of our customers are based in Chennai and wanted us to be here. The initial occupants at this new facility will be our customers from Chennai and across the globe,” he added. 

On expansion plans he said, “We came to India in the first place because we had massive customer demand here. We are in close interaction with our customers, and we are seeing interest in some places. We are trying to validate the requirements. The thing is, we are constantly monitoring our customers’ interest.” 

Equinix, whose customers include the majority of Fortune 500 companies and almost all major OTT platforms, is also focusing heavily on the demand that AI will create for data centers. With India set to be one of the biggest markets for companies like ChatGPT, Paul said the company is closely following the demand for AI and sees demand varying from region to region. 

“We are closely monitoring the demand growth, and we are fully prepared for any customer requirements. Our data centers are fully AI-enabled, and we can build specialised systems for customers based on their needs. Our experience serving similar requests worldwide and our established partnerships means that we have solutions in place,” he said. 

Paul also added that the company has a very close partnership with NVIDIA, and they keep a constant watch on emerging demand trends. “We are fully equipped to support AI-enabled requirements in both Mumbai and Chennai, with rapid deployment possible within existing capacities,” he added.