Ascendas Property Fund Trustee, the trustee-manager of Ascendas India Trust (a-iTrust) has announced that it will invest US$162 million to build and operate phase one of a data centre campus in Airoli, Navi Mumbai, its first in India. The trust is owned by Singapore-based CapitalLand. The acquisition of the site from third-party vendors is expected to complete by Q3 2021.
The 6.6 acre campus will be developed in phases with a potential build out of up to 575,000 sq ft and 90MW of power with a PUE of 1.4. Once fully developed, it will comprise of two buildings. The first building, phase one, is scheduled for completion by Q2 2024, and will have an area of about 325,000 sq ft. The data centre campus is expected to host prospective clients such as global technology giants, cloud service providers, and large domestic enterprise clients.
Ascendas already owns IT and logistics parks in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai. Its entry into the data centre market allows it to diversify its portfolio with a highly scalable asset class.
Parent company, CapitaLand, has been active in the data centre sector since earlier this year – in March it emerged as the successful bidder for Digital Realty’s ‘Fairway’ portfolio in Europe for US$660 million. In April it acquired its first data centre in China with the purchase of a campus in Shanghai for around $564 million.
