Knight Frank, in their latest Data Centre Report 2021, published in partnership with leading data centre research and analytics platform – DC Byte, evidenced that the data centre market has experienced strong momentum in 2021. The report cited that EMEA (Europe, The Middle East and Africa) markets have seen rise of 4% in uptake in the Q1 2021, to 120 Mega Watts (MW) with a 10% increase in new supply overall, totalling to more than 180MW. In Asia Pacific markets, total supply increased by about 200MW in Q1 2021, reflecting a similar pace to 2020 take up – recorded just over 800MW, making a total supply of 5800MW across the region.
Mumbai registered the sharpest increase supply, with 56MW supply added in Q1 2021, recording total supply at 753MW. Pandemic influencedpush for digital services resulted into an acceleration of new supply in 2020 with an additional 252MW or 50% added to its development pipeline. This marked up the total supply to 697MW in the year 2020. Between 2016 and 2019, Mumbai’s IT power capacity increased from 148MW to 456MW.
The Q1 report 2021, which provides comprehensive coverage of 28 key markets, has closely tracked the significant pandemic-driven data usage shift in 2020, which in turn magnified the traditional “buy” cycle and led to record developments in the global data centres market. This year the data shows it is apparent that whilst some markets have kept up with this pace others, mostly Tier II cities, have reported little supply growth in early 2021.
Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director at Knight Frank India said, “Mumbai is amongst the better-established data centre hubs in the APAC region. The city’s location has a strategic importance as a landing destination for undersea data-cables connecting the east and west. The presence of an established telecom industry in India and the push for digital services during the pandemic has further fuelled the growth of data centres in Mumbai. The rise of emerging markets in APAC has brought Mumbai under the focus of multiple international operators, who wish to establish themselves in this region.”