CtrlS to expand data center footprint, add over 5,000 jobs

Hyderabad: CtrlS, Asia’s largest Rated 4 Hyperscale Data Center, which serves 60 of the Fortune 500 global multinationals, is taking up rapid expansion, keeping sustainability at its centre. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Green Man of Indian Data Center Industry, founder & CEO, CtrlS shares with Y V Phani Raj the company’s future plans and overall growth strategy. […]

Hyderabad: CtrlS, Asia’s largest Rated 4 Hyperscale Data Center, which serves 60 of the Fortune 500 global multinationals, is taking up rapid expansion, keeping sustainability at its centre. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Green Man of Indian Data Center Industry, founder & CEO, CtrlS shares with Y V Phani Raj the company’s future plans and overall growth strategy.

Data center footprint

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We have eight operational data centers in India with 1.2 million square feet of Rated-4 Hyperscale Data Centers. Out of this, we have four in Mumbai, two in Hyderabad, one each in Noida and Bengaluru.

Upcoming Hyderabad center

We have acquired about 40 acres of land, and we will soon start the construction. The total size of the data center will be 2 million square feet. The uniqueness of this datacenter is that it will be South India’s largest facility besides being a Rated-4 Hyperscale and Green Datacenter.

Demand drivers

The demand driver for data centers is growth in digital transformation across sectors, high penetration of smartphones with data capabilities, social media adoption, rise in e-commerce, online and app-based transactions. The other factors contributing to growth are rapid adoption of technologies such as cloud, AI/ML, big data, analytics, AR/VR, and internet of things. Smart cities too are leading to growth of data. A smart city with a population of one million typically generates 180 petabytes of data per day. The key sectors driving growth include banking and financial services (BFSI), e-commerce, manufacturing, telecom, IT/ITeS, retail among others.

Focus on innovation

Innovation is integral to CtrlS DNA. We have had 200 innovations since inception. About 80 of those innovations have been focused on energy efficiency and reduction of carbon footprint. As a result of these innovations, CtrlS has the industry lowest power usage effectiveness ratio (PUE) of 1.35 thus reducing power consumption significantly. Secondly, we have built India’s first and only 100 per cent quake resistant and 100 per cent air pollution free rated-4 hyperscale data center in Noida. This apart all our data centers are LEED Platinum v4 O M certified by US Green Building Council (USGBC). Yes, must also mention that our second datacenter (façade) is by solar panels on its exterior instead of glass generating over 1MW of electricity. We are also setting up a 500-acre solar plant to eliminate dependency on fossil fuels and eliminate carbon footprint.

Short-term growth plan

We are expanding our data center footprint from the current capacity of 1.2 million square feet to six million square feet in the next 24 months. The new facilities will be two million square feet in Hyderabad, two million square feet in Mumbai and about one million square feet in Chennai. In Mumbai, the data center park is under construction, while the Hyderabad facility will commence the construction very soon.

Global expansion

We are looking to expand our footprint to over forty countries. We will be hiring local resources as each country has its own influence of language, local culture, and business dynamics.

Edge data centers

We are expanding our edge data center footprint across India. We will be deploying 500 edge data centers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities in a phased manner. There is an increasing need for edge datacenters as tier-2 and tier-3 cities have robust internet connectivity and they wish to access e-commerce, OTT, social media, online gaming, augmented reality, virtual reality, cloud, and related services in their region. This apart, large deployment of IoT across the country will require edge data centers to support smart cities and industry 4.0, logistics powered by IoT among others.

Infrastructure status

Must complement the Government for granting infrastructure status to data centers. This will help data centers gain easier access to institutional credit perhaps at lower rates, attract foreign investments and private capital besides accelerating the digitisation in the country and helping realise the dream of ‘Digital India’ come true.

Hiring plans

We have over 500 employees across the company. With our expansion in Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Chennai, we will be hiring 5,000 plus people across the board. Specifically, in Hyderabad, we will be hiring about 3,000 people.

People philosophy

It is my belief that people are key to business success. They are my priority, taking care of their well-being, their welfare is one of my focus areas. Happy employees make happy customers, and this is core to our work culture. We provide our employees a very open, transparent, and conducive environment to unravel their true potential. Our work culture is focused on fostering teamwork, camaraderie, collaboration, innovation, and new idea generation, which is why CtrlS has been certified as a Great Place to Work. My plan is not only to create wealth for the shareholders, but also to build about 100 millionaires among our employees in the next 5 to 10 years, this for me will be soul-satisfying from a people engagement perspective.

 

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