Ascendas Reit (CapitaLand): CapitaLand To Develop Massive Data Center Campus in Chennai, India

CapitaLand has announced that it bought land in Chennai, India, for a 55MW data center development. The land in question is a 4.01-acre freehold site located in the Ambattur area of India’s Chennai. CapitaLand India Trust (CLINT) will develop the 55MW greenfield facility through its subsidiary Minerva Veritas Data Centre Private Limited. Upon completion, the data center campus will have the capacity for 4,900 racks across seven stories and 420,000 square feet. CLINT plans to deliver phase one by the end of 2025. The company also noted that the facility would target customers like cloud service providers, global technology companies, and large enterprises. 

CapitaLand acquired the land for Rs 730 million ($9.2 million), which would be financed by combining internal resources and debt. The acquisition is expected to close before the year runs out. The CEO of CLINT, Sanjeev Dasgupta, said: “With this latest acquisition, CLINT will have a presence in India’s key data center markets – Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai, and we are also planning to develop a fourth data center in Bangalore. This will allow us to expand in the resilient and highly scalable data center asset class, diversify our data center portfolio geographically, and better serve our customers across the country. India’s data consumption and demand for information technology solutions are fast expanding, but the country has one of the world’s lowest data center densities.”

Earlier in June 2021, CapitaLand signed a memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government of Tamil Nadu to develop data centers in Ambattur, Chennai. This acquisition is a step towards the earlier agreement.