The first phase of MB3 is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2024, providing an initial capacity of more than 1,375 cabinets. It will have more than 4,150 cabinets when fully built out.
Equinix India managing director Manoj Paul (pictured) said: “Particularly in Mumbai, the high demand for our digital infrastructure services among Indian and international customers is making us very optimistic about the market. We are focused on further investments in building the infrastructure in India to enable our existing and new customers in India to launch their services closer to their consumers.”
The new MB3 – which Equinix is calling an International Business Exchange (IBX) will be adjacent to Equinix MB2 data centre in the Chandivali area of the city, and 1.5km from MB1.
Equinix bought MB1 and MB2 from GPX Global Systems in 2021 for $161 million. Paul came into the company via GPX.
Paul said: “The close proximity of MB3 at Chandivali Farm Road to our existing data centres will enable us to form a robust campus so that our customers can leverage the dense ecosystems from any of our data centres in Mumbai.”
Equinix cited a report by JLL, the real estate advisor to the data centre company in connection with the land transaction, that says Mumbai is India’s biggest data centre market and is expected to grow over 2.5 times to nearly 530MW by 2023.
Equinix pointed out that Mumbai, on the west coast of India, hosts a dozen subsea cable landing points as well as cloud regions of global major cloud service providers.
In March 2022, Equinix expanded to the Chennai market – on India’s east coast – with a land acquisition of over 5.5 acres.
