16.2.21

Bengal: Ambassador land to host ₹10k-crore IT park

The land at Hindustan Motor that once used to house the manufacturing facility of Ambassador, once called the wheels of India, is all set to get a new lease of life.

The Hiranandani Group, a Mumbai-based diversified conglomerate, has entered into an MoU to set up a logistics and hyper-scale data centre park in the region. The group has signed the agreement to acquire 100 acres in Uttarpara from Hindustan Motors to set up the data centre park by Hiranandani group companies GreenBase and Yotta. The combined investment is estimated to cross Rs.10,000 crore. The project was announced by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, along with a host of other IT and power projects, at Nabanna.

Darshan Hiranandani, CEO of the group, said that it had bought the land directly from the C K Birla group that owns the now defunct Hind Motor factory and Hindustan Motors. There will be a data centre on 20 acres and the rest — 80 acres — would be utilized for warehousing and logistics facilities. “Kicking off this project would not have been possible without the support of the Bengal government under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee. West Bengal is the gateway to the east. It is an ideal hub for logistics and industrial development with excellent road, rail and riverine connectivity,” said Darshan Hiranandani. According to him, the first facility of the industrial and logistics park will be ready by June 2022 and the first data centre building by 2023.

Incidentally, in 2008-09, Chennai-based Shriram Group had bought over 300 acres at Hind Motor factory for real estate and IT park.

GreenBase will deliver a modern and self-sustainable ecosystem on 3-million sq ft of industrial and warehousing space, along with essential utilities and support infrastructure of international standards. Yotta will develop six hyper-connected data centre buildings, bringing in 250MW of cutting-edge data centre capacity over the next several years to the state.

“The data centre business will benefit from the digitization revolution, the upcoming Silicon Valley at New Town in Rajarhat and excellent fibre connectivity on land and the new submarine cable coming up at Tajpur. By setting up a data centre park in Kolkata, we will not only serve the customers of the state but the entire eastern region, including neighbouring countries,” Hiranandani said.

Meanwhile, along with the announcement of the Hiranandani project, Banerjee inaugurated four IT parks and three power sub-stations in the state. While two IT parks were inaugurated in Salt Lake Sector V, Rajarhat and Kalyani got one each. The total builtup space in these IT parks is 2.8 lakh sq ft. Sources in IT department said these IT parks would have a plug-and-play approach. There will be both rental as well as ownership space. “Online booking for space in these IT parks would start from March1 and possession would start from the Bengali New Year. There are 18 IT parks in the state and over 70% space in these parks are already occupied.

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