Ports-to-energy conglomerate Adani Group has incorporated a new subsidiary to set up a data centre in Mumbai, one of the half a dozen cities that the billionaire Gautam Adani's group has identified to set up data centres initially.

AdaniConnex Pvt Ltd, a 50:50 joint venture of Adani Enterprises and EdgeConnex Europe BV, on February 4 incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary Mumbai Data Centre Ltd, the Adani group firm said in a stock exchange filing.

The new unit will "undertake business to develop, operate, maintain, deal with data centres, information technology (IT)/ information technology-enabled services (ITES)/ cloud, providing services related thereto and to undertake activities associated with its infrastructure development including land acquisition and development for the said purpose," it said.

MDCL will commence its business operations in due course, it added.

In February 2021, Adani Enterprises Ltd had partnered EdgeConneX, a leading data centre operator, to develop one gigawatt (GW) of data centre capacity over the next decade. The equal joint venture (JV), named AdaniConneX, will focus on building a network of hyperscale data centres in India, starting with Chennai, Navi Mumbai, Noida, Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad.

A data centre provides the necessary secured architecture wherein computing and networking equipment is concentrated for collecting, storing, processing, distributing or allowing access to large amounts of data.

Gautam Adani had in November 2021 stated that he wants his conglomerate to be a world leader in green data storage, with sites run entirely on clean power, in sync with India's goal of turning carbon net-zero by 2070.

Diversification strategy

The diversification comes against the backdrop of India's digital economy expected to touch USD 1 trillion by 2025. Also, the Reserve Bank of India's norm mandates data localisation, necessitating the need for setting up large data centres to store and protect information.

Data localisation refers to storing data on any device physically present within the borders of a country where the data is generated.

Adani and other large corporates from Reliance Jio to Bharti Airtel are also seeking to tap this opportunity.

Adani group last year got land in Noida, near here, for the data centre from the Uttar Pradesh government. Flipkart has partnered with Adani Group to set up its third data centre in Chennai.

Last week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget for 2022-23 proposed to classify data centres and energy storage as infrastructure assets allowing firms to access cheap and long-term credit.

"As India's internet economy continues to be on a surge, as there is an increasing need to build a requisite data centre to ensure seamless uninterrupted data consumption and storage.

"The growing smartphone subscribers with rising monthly mobile data traffic, coupled with rising broadband penetration and increasing digital transactions per year, will create an enormous need to collect, store, process and distribute data," Adani Group said on its website.

It said Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) is the only company with inherent capabilities to build Data centres across the country. The firm has "complete ownership of large land parcels across the country, project management capabilities and resources availability, end-to-end power value chain (generation, transmission and distribution), fibre connectivity and strong network connectivity".

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