As India’s digital transformation accelerates, the need for scalable and sustainable data center infrastructure is growing rapidly. CtrlS Datacenters, a leading hyperscale provider in the Asia-Pacific region, is addressing this demand with the launch of its latest 75MW facility, Namma Datacenter, in Chennai. Varun Gupta, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research, engaged with Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder and Chairman of CtrlS Datacenters, at the launch event to explore the factors driving India’s data center growth. Sridhar shared insights on CtrlS’ focus on energy efficiency, AI-ready infrastructure and the policy support needed to sustain momentum.

The Interview

Key takeaways

Strong fundamentals driving expansion:

• CtrlS is expanding rapidly across India. What is helping is its focus on high energy efficiency, Rated-4 infrastructure, and green energy through its Green Volt division. Growing demand from cloud, AI and mobile usage is adding to this momentum.

India is ready for global data center demand:

• India is now among the most competitive regions in the world for data centers. With trained talent, strong vendor ecosystems and lower costs, Sridhar believes India is ahead of 95% of the global market.
• Tackling power challenges with infrastructure and innovation Power reliability used to be a big issue, but CtrlS is solving it by building its own 220kV substations. Green power availability is still a challenge due to state-level regulations, but CtrlS is pushing ahead with its own solar plants.

AI-ready infrastructure across key locations

• CtrlS facilities in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata are already AI-ready. They support high-density workloads and are equipped with advanced cooling solutions like liquid cooling.
• Policy and regulatory support can unlock the next phase India needs more uniform access to low-cost green power. Sridhar also emphasized the importance of policy focus, including global diplomacy aligned with AI goals, to support long-term industry growth.
  

Analyst takeaways

• Indians are now consuming more than 20GB of data per user per month and that has placed the country among the top countries for data usage. As internet applications become more data-intensive, local demand is driving the current phase of growth in data capacity across the country.
• With the rapid rise of AI applications and increasing government regulations on data privacy, requiring data to be stored within India, the demand for data capacity to support these workloads has already surpassed supply.
• While BFSI was a key driver of demand initially and cloud growth has been prominent over the last five years, AI is expected to lead the way in the coming years.
• CtrlS has most of the teams needed to build a data center in-house, which helps it keep costs in check. The company’s faster time to market enables it to maintain an edge, keeping the overall cost of building lower than its nearest competitors.
• CtrlS has a clear roadmap for this decade, with plans to launch more data centers across India and expand into Southeast Asia. The company is positioning itself to be one of the leading data center providers in India.