Key Takeaways

Big Tech is increasingly enlisting the services of big Indian conglomerates such as Adani Group and Reliance to establish new mega data facilities in India
Not only do these conglomerates come with considerable balance sheets and political connections, but they are also able to bring with them clients and secure vital permits
They have also partnered with established data centre operators to expand their know-how, further allowing them to win the confidence of hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google
Riding on the back of this, AdaniConneX alone now boasts a pipeline of data centre orders totalling 215 MW of capacity

For Microsoft, the pandemic years of 2021 and 2022 were action-packed. The US tech company, despite not having an infrastructure team in India, scrambled to build its own data hosting facilities in the country to compete with arch-rival Amazon Web Services (AWS). While it had historically used third-party data centre services in Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai to host data for its cloud customers, this capacity simply wasn’t enough.

In 2022, the company ambitiously announced that it would invest Rs 16,000 crore to build India’s largest data centre facility in Hyderabad, Telangana. It acquired three land parcels around the south Indian city for this, choosing these on the advice of its trusted global partner, US-based infrastructure consultancy firm Aecom, which did the technical due diligence and engineering design for the project. Microsoft hired general contractor Fluor, another of its American partner organisations, to oversee builds across the three locations, as well as another facility in Pune.

These projects, however, soon hit a wall. Microsoft was unable to secure the required permits for these facilities, resulting in their development being held up for several months, a senior executive involved in the execution of the project told The CapTable.