Mumbai Third On List With Total Capacities Now At 2337 MW, Breached The 2 GW Mark In Q1 2023: Knight Frank

* Nearly 50% of Mumbai’s total capacity is in the early stage at 1247 MW

* Data centre growth across Asia Pacific on consistent demand in Q1 2023

International Property Consultant, Knight Frank, in their latest Data Centre Q1 2023 report, published in partnership with leading data centre research and analytics platform – DC Byte cited that Shanghai (2,692 MW), Tokyo (2,575 MW), and Mumbai (2,337 MW) have emerged as the top Data Centre markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

The report focuses on nine rapidly emerging markets in Asia Pacific Region, namely - Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo. Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, Singapore, and Hong Kong have a high percentage of their capacity in the live segment indicating higher level of commissioning and demand.

Mumbai is the only city from India on the study and has emerged as the standout growth story of Q1 2023, with the market’s total capacity expansion surpassing the 2,000MW milestone. Over 328MW of capacity was added, driven by announcements from existing players and a new market entrant - Digital Edge, a Stonepeak-backed operator set to deliver a hyperscale facility to the market. Supply movements have moderated compared to previous quarters, with over 40% of its current live capacity absorbed throughout 2022. The city with 2,337MW stood third on the list in terms of the total capacity of data centre services. The live capacity (operational capacity) stood at 270 MW with over half of the total capacity in the early stage at 1272 MW, and 11.55% of its capacity in the live segment. NTT- Netmagic and CtrlS constitute just over half of the live capacity in the market currently.

Bangkok also saw impressive growth, increasing nearly 30% since the beginning of the year. Market players are actively expanding their presence and increasing their share building on the strong absorption seen in 2022. To take advantage of favourable market conditions, a number of operators are expanding their capacity in various parts of the city. In a similar vein, Kuala Lumpur saw significant expansion in supply levels, with the expansion recorded in Q1 2023 being a third of the total supply added to the market in all of 2022.

Mr. Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director at Knight Frank India said, “The data centre sector has witnessed a remarkable acceleration in recent years, driven by the exponential growth of internet usage across commerce, social media, entertainment, and cloud adoption. As data centres gain prominence as an asset class in the country, investors are leveraging various strategies such as mergers and acquisitions (M&As), joint ventures, and land acquisitions to tap into this thriving sector. As a representative of India’s growing Data Centre landscape, Mumbai has emerged as a key beneficiary with significant growth in its total capacity”.