Indian real estate developer Rustomjee is set to expand into the data center industry.
First reported in Business Standard, the company plans to invest in the development of data centers to support the increasing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
Historically, Rustomjee has focused on building luxury homes and real estate. It will now develop data centers across 5 million sq ft (465,000 sqm) of land in Thane, a suburb of Mumbai where the company has “economic interest,” according to Chandresh Dinesh Mehta, executive director of Keystone Realtors.
He added that the company plans on getting both strategic and financial partners for the project.
Rustomjee is the brand under which publicly-listed company Keystone Realtors operates.
The company entered a JV with Singapore’s Keppel Land in 2019 to build a residential township in the suburb of Thane. It is unclear whether this land will be now allocated for data center development in lieu of the planned residential homes.
Earlier this year in the Hindustan Times, Boman Irani, managing director and chairman at Rustomjee, said the company was considering branching into data centers after successfully adding 15 new property developments to its portfolio in the last two years.
Keystone Realtors was founded in 1995 in Dahisar, Mumbai. Its Rustomjee brand began operations in 2001.
In April this year, a report from DC Byte said India led growth in the APAC region’s data center market. Mumbai is a rapidly emerging market with a total supply of 2.6GW, split between two key clusters in Central Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
STT, NTT, Iron Mountain, PDG, CtrlS, Equinix, and Tata all have a presence in the region.
Many real estate developers globally have seen expansion into the data center sector as an attractive option. Last month, real estate developer Greystar in South Carolina expanded into the industry.
