CAPITALAND India Trust’s (Clint) manager announced on Wednesday (Jan 15) that it has signed a long-term agreement with a leading global hyperscaler for one of its data centres under development.
With this, Clint is likely to pre-lease around half of its total gross power capacity under development, of around 250 megawatts (MW), the trust’s manager said.
The move is part of Clint’s strategic diversification plans and will strengthen its portfolio in India, the trust’s manager said. It is also developing four facilities in the key data centre corridors of India, which are Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
Gauri Shankar Nagabhushanam, chief executive officer of Clint’s manager, said: “Clint’s decision to diversify into critical infrastructure such as data centres is validated by the strong interest shown by hyperscale and enterprise customers and positions us well to capitalise on India’s burgeoning digitalisation needs.”
He added that Clint is on track to complete the development of its India data centres, accelerate leasing momentum, and unlock value through divestments of partial stakes to strategic investors.
“With the support of our sponsor, CapitaLand Investment (CLI), we are well-poised to meet the fast-growing demand for data centre capacity in India,” said Nagabhushanam.
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Manohar Khiatani, senior executive director of CLI, noted that demand for data centres is set to grow on the back of rapid digital transformation, increased adoption of cloud computing, and the need for data localisation.
Moreover, India – a core market for CLI – demonstrates “strong growth potential” across asset classes Clint is active in, including data centres, said Khiatani, who oversees the global real asset manager’s data centre business.
“India is seeing a surge in demand for data storage and processing given the significant scale and growth of mobile and Internet users and businesses widely adopting technologies such as artificial intelligence and Internet of things,” he said.
He added that CLI is “fully equipped” to support Clint’s growth in India, given its 30 years of experience in the country, its strong technical capabilities, and its global customer network.
CLI has 27 data centres globally and offers more than 800 MW of gross power on a “completed basis”. This positions it to cater to the expansion needs of hyperscalers and enterprises, said Khiatani.
On Tuesday before the news, units of Clint closed down 0.9 per cent or S$0.01 at S$1.06 and units of CLI closed up 0.4 per cent or S$0.01 at S$2.46.
