E-commerce major Amazon, a leader in cloud computing service with its Amazon Web Services (AWS), is considering setting up two data centres near Hyderabad with a total investment of ₹11,630 crore (around $1.6 billion).
One of the data centres is being proposed with an investment of ₹5,809 crore on over 48 acres (1,94,293 sq metres) in Meerkhanpet village under Kandukur mandal in neighbouring Rangareddy district.
The location of the facility will be a part of the Hyderabad Pharma City industrial area.
The other data centre will also come up in the neighbouring district on about 33 acres (1,37,033 sq metres), in Chandanvelly and Hythabad villages in Shabad mandal, entailing an investment of ₹5,821 crore.
Both the facilities are to be developed in a phased manner. Amazon moved a step closer towards establishing the facilities when it got approval for them from the Telangana State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC) as well as Telangana State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority recently.
The SEIAA approval, which came a few days ago, is subject to the company giving undertaking on certain issues, including following green building concepts and make provision for maximum use of renewable energy.
According to documents forming part of the environmental clearance process, the project is being proposed through Amazon Data Services India. In a presentation, for each of the data centre, the company said data centre is the safe and secure storage, management and processing of customer data and information through cloud computing.
The decision of the company assumes significance in the context of upcoming data localisation norms in India that will make it mandatory for all data to be stored within the country. It will be equally important from a perspective of creating a backbone for the growing market for cloud computing services.
For Telangana, which has a policy on data centres in place, it will be the second major investment by Amazon.
The US firm had in August opened a three-million square feet campus building on a 9.5 acre in Hyderabad’s Financial District. It was the first owned office building outside the U.S. and the single largest building globally, the company had said. The built-up area at the campus includes 1.8 million sq ft of office space that can seat 15,000 people.