Oct 27, 2022
Amazon Data Services India has acquired a 54-acre parcel in Thane, near Mumbai, from real estate developer Kalpataru Group for over Rs 1,870 crore in one of the largest outright land purchases this year, said two people with direct knowledge of the development.
Amazon has paid a record stamp duty of Rs 130 crore—the most for a single deal—for the registration that took place on October 21.
Kalpataru had acquired nearly 70 acres in Thane’s Balkum locality through two separate transactions in 2004 and 2010 for a total of around Rs 300 crore from Clariant Chemicals and its subsidiary Color Chem.
Kalpataru is developing a premium residential project, Paramount, on part of the remaining land. Amazon Data Services India is planning to develop a hyperscale data centre on the plot.
This is the third time in the past few months that Amazon Data Services India has bought or long-term-leased a large piece of land.
In June, the Amazon Group company picked up 5.5 acres in Mumbai’s Powai suburb from engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro through a long-term lease of 21.5 years.
The subsidiary of Amazon is planning to develop a data centre on this land parcel as well. It will be paying rent of more than Rs 921 crore over the total lease tenure, excluding the rent escalation.
The agreement includes a clause to escalate the lease rental by 3% every year.
Earlier this month, Amazon Data Services India entered into an agreement with real estate developer K Raheja Corp’s subsidiary Newfound Properties and Leasing to pick up a commercial tower with a built-up area of 451,000 sq ft through a long-term sublease of over 15 years in Thane, also for a data centre.
Amazon India and Kalpataru didn’t respond to ET's separate email queries.
With growing digitization in India, data-centers are becoming more crucial for several concepts such as payments, gaming, or even the needs of upcoming trends such as the metaverse.
Data centres in India are emerging as the most attractive growth opportunity for global investors and leading developers. Investments are flowing into the data centre markets, with multiple new markets created simultaneously, along with the rapid development of campus sizes found in the most established global cities.
This clearly indicates the rising preference for India among global data centre majors and is attributed to the data localisation norms and the government’s proposed new data centre policy aimed at simplifying the rules. The new data centre policy is also expected to provide necessary clearances and infrastructure in a time-bound manner.
Additional factors, such as the new submarine cable infrastructure linking Mumbai and Chennai to Singapore, South East Asia, Europe and the Middle East, will help position India as a more attractive Asia-Pacific location for data centre development, expansion and investment in the years to come.
With a population of over 1.4 billion, the world’s fifth-largest economy in terms of GDP and an expanding focus on the digital delivery of services, India represents a key market opportunity to extend coverage, capacity, and connectivity options for the world’s leading service providers as well as local and global enterprise customers.
India is a high-growth market, with data center demand expected to significantly increase, driven by rapidly growing data consumption, digitization of the economy, the onset of 5G and data localization trends.
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