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Social media giant Meta is likely to house its first data centre in India at the Reliance Industries campus in Chennai, several people aware of the matter told ET. This will help the American company process user generated content locally across its flagship apps such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led company inked a deal with RIL following discussions at the recently concluded pre-wedding celebrations of Ambani scion Anant at Jamnagar in early March, the sources added.
The deal value could not be independently ascertained.
Meta will now be able to operate four to five nodes across multiple locations across the country allowing for faster data processing in what is its largest market. Currently, data from Indian users of Meta products is serviced at its data centre in Singapore. With a local data centre, in addition to content, local advertisements will also enhance user experience and cut transmission costs from global data hubs, people in the know said.
The 10-acre campus (MAA10) in Chennai’s Ambattur Industrial Estate is a three-way joint venture between Brookfield Asset Management, Reliance Industries and Digital Realty. It can cater up to 100-Megawatt (MW) IT load capacity.
Reliance Industries and Meta Platforms did not respond to ET’s queries while Brookfield declined to comment.
Heightened Scrutiny
Experts are of the view that as the government tightens scrutiny over large AI (artificial intelligence) models, Meta may be looking to run such operations locally.
Meta’s Llama series of open-source large language models is one of the most used foundational models by Indian enterprises. It is being used to create applications and to fine-tune models trained on proprietary data.
“Meta would aim for greenfield data centres across key regions including Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi NCR, which can suffice its strong infrastructure requirements from fibre to power,” said Neil Shah, partner at technology research firm Counterpoint Research.
While Facebook has 314.6 million users in India, Instagram has 350 million and WhatsApp has 480 million. The number of users in India are nearly double that in its home country the US.
Meta Platforms reported that its advertisement revenue from click-to-message ads in India, across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has doubled during the September 2023 quarter.
“While India has the largest number of users, it is still underpenetrated if you look at the installed smartphone user base which is close to 850 million. Trying to localise user-generated content and ads is a prudent strategy as it will reduce latency, enhance AI-driven recommendations, and save transmission costs from Singapore and other hubs,” Shah said.
The MAA10 data centre campus is equipped to support AI language models, Digital Connexion said back in January when the facility was opened.
India’s data centre industry is expected to double capacity in the next three years, CareEdge Ratings said in a study. Currently, India has a data centre capacity share of only 3% globally despite generating 20% of the global data.
However, this is likely to change with the big tech companies like Meta and Google looking to localise data storage in India.
ET had reported last week that Alphabet Inc.’s Google is in advanced talks to buy a 22.5-acre land parcel in Navi Mumbai to build its first-ever captive data centre in the country.
Kailash Babar in Mumbai contributed to this article.
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