Digital infrastructure company Equinix Inc on Wednesday announced an initial investment of over $86 million to build its third International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Mumbai, to be named MB3, in a bid to serve the rapidly increasing digital infrastructure demand.

This initial investment includes an acquisition of a land parcel, which provides a total space of nearly 4 acres.

“Equinix’s continued investment in Mumbai will further enhance its network-dense and interconnection-rich data center platform in India, meeting the significant demand from global and local customers,” the company said in a statement.

New location

MB3 IBX will be strategically located in Mumbai’s Commercial district (Chandivali area), which is regarded as the retail data center sub-market. It will be adjacent to Equinix MB2 IBX data center and 1.5 km away from MB1 IBX data center. The first phase of MB3 is scheduled to open in Q2 2024, providing an initial capacity of over 1,375 cabinets, and over 4,150 cabinets when fully built out.

Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India said, “The increasing digitalisation of the economy is continuously driving the demand for data center and interconnection services in India. Particularly in Mumbai, the high demand for our digital infrastructure services among Indian and international customers is making us very optimistic about the market.”

“We are focused on further investments in building the infrastructure in India to enable our existing and new customers in India to launch their services closer to their consumers. The close proximity of MB3 at Chandivali Farm Road to our existing data centers will enable us to form a robust campus so that our customers can leverage the dense ecosystems from any of our data centers in Mumbai. This investment will also be supporting the government’s vision to make India a key data center hub in South East Asia,” added Paul.

Global network

Equinix operates more than 240 data centers across 70 metros globally, providing digital infrastructure for more than 10,000 businesses. In Asia-Pacific, Equinix currently has 52 data centers in key metros across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore. In 2021, Equinix entered India through the acquisition of two data centers in Mumbai, named MB1 and MB2.

Providing a total of 1,350 cabinets, the two data centers in Mumbai house the digital infrastructure of more than 270 international brands and local companies, including cloud service providers, global networks, content delivery network providers, all local carriers, more than 165 internet service providers (ISPs) and five internet exchanges.

In March 2022, Equinix expanded to the Chennai market with land acquisition of over 5.5 acres. JLL acted as the exclusive real estate advisor to Equinix in connection with the land transaction.

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