Data centres, cloud biz akin to Y2K moment for India: Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The national data centre and cloud policy comes at a time when the demand for leveraging opportunities could prove to be a “Y2K moment for those in the digital space,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, said on Friday.

Chandrasekhar said the overall policy framework was aimed at spurring states to accelerate its response. “Those states that are proactive, alert and move fast will attract investment within one-and-half years,” he said, speaking to the media after a four-and-half hour consultation meet with various stakeholders on the proposed centre and policy, here.

He said ‘’Representatives of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana attended the meet. Tamil Nadu is very keen to attract investments in data centres and it is like the Y2K moment (for the industry a huge opportunity can be seized).”

Post-Y2K, India became one of the destinations in the IT space for enterprises with quality talent and competitiveness.

Chandrasekhar said the aforesaid States were becoming hubs of data centres and electronics manufacturing.

As per Ministry officials, the country has around 499 MW of installed power capacity for data centres, and the growth in the projected data centre capacity was expected to reach 2,000 MW by 2027.

Chandrasekhar said the States need to be proactive in attracting investments in the data centre and cloud space. ‘’This National Data Centre and Cloud Policy aims to accelerate the growth of data centres and cloud services in the country. It encourages the usage of indigenous platforms in the data centre and cloud operations,’’ he said.

On cyber security, he said about 80 crore citizens were using the internet and this would grow to 1.2 billion in the next few years.

‘’There will be more number of Indian start-ups in the cloud space,’’ he said, adding the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) would engage in the role of enabling entrepreneurs to set up data centres.