New Delhi, May 28 (IANS): On the back of various policy initiatives, widening customer base and increasing corporate requirements for data storage, a CBRE report has said that the data centre market is set to grow in 2020 with rising demand and supply.

Supporting the growth of data centre capacity in India, the report highlighted that markets across Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune and NCR are expected to witness supply addition of up to 40 per cent in 2020. Out of this, Mumbai currently leads with 41 per cent data centre capacity, followed by Bengaluru and Delhi where supply is likely to increase by 17 and 16 per cent respectively.

"With growing digital consumption patterns such as online gaming, online education, streaming, e-commerce, total internet hits etc., DC (data centre) operators are expected to see a huge demand for data centre space, thereby scaling up their DC facilities quickly to serve hyperscalers & enterprise clients," it said.

Commenting on the data centre market in India, Anshuman Magazine, Chairman & CEO - India, South East Asia, Middle East & Africa, CBRE said: "In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, we expect regulatory support to augment the Data Centre demand in India. Policy impetus such as the National E-commerce Policy, Personal Data Protection Bill, proposed policy on Data Centre Parks and digital initiatives by the government will accelerate demand."

He added that the Covid-19 situation will further propel the next wave of growth in the sector.

CBRE expects that global players are likely to continue to take interest in investing in the country, with a focus on backing leading operators or funding prominent developers to foray into the data centre segment in 2020.

Further, against the backdrop of the COVID-19 situation in India, corporates would be inclined towards investing in the cloud and hybrid IT infrastructure, as operations would move online and employees may need tocontinue to work from home, the report noted.