UP braces to be biggest data centre as Yogi govt approves three parks

Uttar Pradesh is all set to become the biggest centre of data storage among northern states with the Yogi Adityanath government recently approving three data centre parks.

The government plans to invest around ₹20,000 crore in the data centre industry in the next five years and has already received proposals of ₹16,000 crore from five willing investors – Hiranandani Group Adani Group, NTT Japan and Web Werks India Private Limited.

Apart from this, at least 13 companies have approached the governmet to invest ₹25,848 crore in the sector.

At present data is being stored in centres outside the country. However, the growing usage of data and need for confidentially have increased the demand for storage centres in India. The Uttar Pradesh government is tapping into this demand to make the state the preferred investment destination for data centre industry.

The state government claims that the proposed parks will help in storing and safeguarding data within the country. The government will also ensure adequate and uninterrupted supply of power, the lifeline of data centres, through the ‘Open Access Scheme’.

At the central level, the Information and Technology Ministry plans to make investments of up to ₹3 lakh crore in the data centre ecosystem over the next five years.

To give a boost to the industry, the ministry plans to offer incentives worth ₹15,000 crore  under a national policy framework, which will be soon tabled before the cabinet for approval.

The government has introduced the incentive to encourage the usage of renewable energy wherever required. The government says, of the ₹15,000 crore corpus, a chunk will be set aside for capital investment. For instance, an incentive of 4 to 6 per cent will be given on investments if components such as servers, server trays, server housing units etc are procured from Indian manufacturing units.

The government plans to request states to provide electricity at subsidized rates to the data centres in areas where it is not possible to make use of renewable energy.