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Date: February 26, 2022

STPI to be enabler, facilitator for Data Centre investors and states: Union MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar

MoS

The Software Technology Park of India (STPI), which has an extensive network around the country, will play the role of facilitator for data centre entrepreneurs and investors, and facilitate their engagement with the States for approvals, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY).

He was in the city to interact with industry members – start-ups, MSME/SMEs and other companies – on the Draft National Data Centre and Cloud Policy.

“Today, I learnt about single point of contact as more and more people want the facilitation at the State level,” he told newspersons after the meeting. There were many ‘high quality’ suggestions around Cloud, its security, the entry and exit on to the Cloud, portability and interface between multiple clouds, he added.

Energy efficient & sustainable

The National Data Centre & Cloud Policy intends to facilitate setting up of energy efficient, sustainable and green data centres. However, to do this, the State governments have to do some work including service level agreements (SLAs) from the discoms, and between the discom and the company.

The governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are keen to pursue this investment. This is like the Y2K movement for the entire digital space. “In the next 1-2 years, the States, start-ups and investors who make a move and pursue these opportunities will only succeed,” he added.

The policy’s objectives include accelerating the growth of the data centres and Cloud services and encouraging the usage of indigenous platforms/solutions in the data centre, said a release.

Growth projection of digital economy

The size of the digital economy in India is estimated to grow exponentially from around $200 billion to $1 trillion by 2025-26. At present, India has 499 MW installed power capacity for data centres and is projected to grow to 1,007 MW by 2023.

Under the hyperscale data centre scheme, the government is targeting investment of ₹3 lakh crore in the next five years, said Amitesh Kumar Sinha, Joint Secretary, MeitY. The proposed draft policy intends to accelerate the growth in the project in the projected data centre capacity with a capacity addition of 2,000 MW by 2027, he said.

To a question on cybersecurity, the Minister said that presently 80 crore Indians are using the Internet, and in the next two years 1.2 billion Indians will be using it for various purposes from studies to work to entertainment. In this aspect, cybersecurity plays a vital role and the government of India has created many institutions to make the internet safe and secure, he said.

On the semiconductor industry, the Minister said that this government has committed around $30 billion in to expanding the electronics and semiconductor ecosystem. This is an unprecedented investment by the Centre in to manufacturing, hi-tech and digital space. Every leading name in electronic manufacturing is in India. This includes Samsung, Foxconn, Pegaton and Vistron.

“We expect the same to be in the semiconductor space. Some State governments pursuing these opportunities, investment and jobs include Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana for electronic manufacturing,” he said.

On the recent workers’ issue at Foxconn plant in Chennai, the Minister said, “Those who need to have the discussion, had the discussion. These are important investments for the State and the country. We must all do our best to make sure that these investments grow, expand and create jobs. I publicly tweeted about that, and don’t want to say anything today.”

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