Equinix, announced an initial investment of approximately US$86 million to establish its third International Business ExchangeTM (IBX®) data center in Mumbai, dubbed MB3, to meet the rapidly expanding need for digital infrastructure. This initial investment involves the purchase of a plot of land covering roughly 4 acres, allowing Equinix to expand its rich ecosystem on Platform Equinix® across India and support the country’s burgeoning digital economy.
According to a recent analysis by JLL, Mumbai, India’s financial and commerce centre, is the country’s leading data center market, with demand predicted to expand 2.5 times to roughly 530 megawatts (MW) by 2023. Mumbai, India’s financial hub, is home to a dozen subsea cable landing points and most the world’s major cloud service providers’ cloud regions. Equinix’s sustained investment in Mumbai will help the company expand its network-dense, interconnection-rich data center platform in India, which is in high demand from both international and domestic customers. This expansion will help Indian enterprises improve their digital transformation strategies while also allowing global companies from a variety of industries to develop their operations in India.
MB3 IBX will be adjacent to Equinix MB2 IBX data center and 1.5 kilometers away from MB1 IBX data center. It will be strategically positioned in Mumbai’s Commercial sector (Chandivali region), which is recognized as the retail data center sub-market. The first phase of MB3 is set to open in Q2 2024, with an initial capacity of over 1,375 cabinets and a total capacity of over 4,150 cabinets when entirely built out.
Manoj Paul, Managing Director, Equinix India commented, “The increasing digitalization of 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 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 Southeast Asia.
