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HYDERBAD: After infrastructure, defence, realty and FMCG, the $11 billion turnover Adani conglomerate is foraying into the IT sector with a Rs 70,000 crore starting investment in the digital infrastructure space.

With the central government focused on data of Indians remaining within the country, the Gujarat-based Adani group is setting up the mother of all data centre infrastructure in the country in Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram in AP through group flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd, which will be the world’s first fully green, integrated cloud-based data centre parks of around 5GW capacity. The group also plans to set up similar data centres across the country.

Adani will invest ₹10k crore in 1st phase

The three data centre parks in AP would be spread over 500 acres at Kapuluppada and Nakapalli, both in Visakhapatnam, and Vizianagaram, entailing a Rs 70,000 crore investment over the next 20 years. The company, which inked an MoU with the AP government in Vijayawada on Wednesday, hopes to create about 1 lakh direct and indirect jobs.

Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani told TOI that the company has already acquired 100 acres at Kapuluppada and will be investing about Rs 10,000 crore in the first phase and will scale this up to about Rs 50,000 crore in next 10 years.

“We are setting up the world’s first fully green data centre that will be powered entirely by solar power at Kapuluppada. We are also talking to various state governments to put up multiple green data centres at strategic locations in the country,” Adani said.

Adani has roped in Vipin Jain, who was executive vice-president and head of data centre operations at Reliance Communications till June 2018, as senior vice-president to spearhead this foray. Giving the bigger picture, Adani said: “Data centres are fundamental building blocks for enabling every aspect of the critical tech infrastructure that India needs to accelerate its growth. The group’s vision is to create a network of core hyperscale data centre parks with capacities of over 1GW each on the east and west coasts of India along with edge hyperscale data centres across major cities. These will be integrated with a backbone of undersea cables and routed through our ports across the country.”

According to him, the group will also be building captive renewable plants to power these data centre parks, putting it in a leading position in the renewable energy space.

“Through multiple investments across strategic locations in the country in data centre parks and sites, we envision to create an integrated solution that can deliver world-class offerings with core focus on sustainability, reliability, efficiency and economics,” he said. Pointing out that the exponential drop in the cost of internet connectivity is unleashing a digital revolution and the demand to connect digitally is ready to explode, Adani said his group would bring its vast experience in full stack energy management — renewable, baseload, transmission, and distribution — along with its project execution skills to set up data centre infrastructure.

