CtrlS's Chennai Datacenter Park at Ambattur — branded Namma Datacenter — carries 72 MW of IT load across two interconnected buildings and about 1 million sq ft. Building 1 was fully booked before opening; Building 2 is a G+10 structure of 27 MW across 290,000 sq ft. It is Rated-4 compliant, meaning fault-tolerant with no single point of failure, supports liquid-cooled GPU racks up to 70 kW, and is powered by a dedicated 230 kV GIS substation rated at 120 MW — nearly 1.7 times the campus IT load.
1At a glance
Record ID
PRJ-032 — Gridvik India Data Centre Registry
Project
CtrlS Chennai Datacenter Park — Namma Datacenter, CtrlS's fifth hyperscale campus in India
Operator
CtrlS Datacenters Ltd, Hyderabad, founded 2007. Self-described as Asia's largest Rated-4 data-centre operator
Location
Ambattur Industrial Estate, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
State
Tamil Nadu
Record type
campus_aggregate — the 72 MW contains both buildings
Status
Live. Announced February 2024; campus inaugurated 25 February 2025 by chief minister M K Stalin; second building delivered thereafter
Capacity
72 MW IT load across two buildings — Building 1 at 45 MW, Building 2 at 27 MW
Built-up area
About 1 million sq ft across two buildings · Building 2 alone is 290,000 sq ft on a ground-plus-ten structure
Power
A dedicated 230 kV GIS substation rated at 120 MW
Resilience
Rated-4 compliant — fault-tolerant, no single point of failure · earthquake resistance to 7.5 on the Richter scale · flood-resistant, 14 m above sea level with 2.2 m of additional campus elevation
Investment
₹4,000 crore direct, plus ₹50,000 crore of claimed indirect investment
Gridvik tier
A — procurement-ready. Both buildings delivered, with an unusually large power connection and a Rated-4 specification
2The building arithmetic
| Element | IT load | Area | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building 1 — Chennai DC1 | 45 MW | Part of 1m sq ft | Live |
| Building 2 — Chennai DC2 | 27 MW | 290,000 sq ft · G+10 | Delivered |
| Campus | 72 MW | ~1 million sq ft | Design |
| Substation | 120 MW | — | 230 kV GIS |
Gridvik read — a one-megawatt discrepancy, and it is in the operator's own material
CtrlS' press material and most coverage state Building 2 at 27 MW and the campus at 72 MW. 45 + 27 = 72, which reconciles exactly.
One report of the inauguration quotes the chairman describing two interconnected buildings of 45 MW and 28 MW. That sums to 73, not 72. Gridvik treats 27 MW as the operative figure because it is the one that appears in the operator's press release, in facility listings and in the building specification — and records the 28 MW variant rather than silently dropping it.
For capacity counting: 72 MW is the campus IT load and it contains both buildings. DC2's 27 MW must never be added to the 72 MW.
3Power — a 120 MW connection for a 72 MW park
This is the most over-provisioned power connection in Indian colocation, and it is the single most important fact about the site.
The substation
A dedicated 230 kV gas-insulated substation rated at 120 MW. Dedicated means it serves this campus alone, not shared with other customers on an industrial estate
Why 230 kV is unusual
Indian data centres typically connect at 110 kV or 33 kV. 230 kV is transmission-level — the same class as a utility substation serving a town. It means fewer transformation stages, lower losses, and far more load sanctioned
The headroom
120 MW of substation capacity against 72 MW of IT load. After accounting for a PUE of roughly 1.3 to 1.4, the actual facility draw at full IT load is around 95 to 100 MW — so the substation carries roughly 20 to 25 MW of genuine spare capacity. That is what allows a park to grow without a new grid application, which in India can take years
Why that matters commercially
Power sanctioned is the binding constraint on Indian data-centre expansion, not land and not capital. A campus with 20–25 MW of headroom can add capacity on demand. A campus that has to apply for a new connection cannot — and the Adani Noida Sector 80 record (PRJ-008) shows what a permission problem can do to a project
Dual redundant
CtrlS describes the substation as "dedicated and dual redundant", which implies two independent transformation paths within the GIS installation
Four fibre entry paths
Carrier-neutral with four fibre entry paths — genuine physical route diversity, which is the connectivity equivalent of the dual power path
What is not disclosed
The transmission utility, the sanctioned load in MVA, the connection date, the tariff arrangement, and whether any of the 120 MW is contracted to a third party
4Rated-4 and the resilience spec
Rated-4 / Tier-4
Fault-tolerant. The facility can sustain any single fault — an equipment failure, a power path outage, an operator error — without affecting the IT load, and can be maintained concurrently while everything runs. This is a stricter standard than the Rated-3 that most Indian facilities publish
What it costs to build
Full duplication of the power and cooling paths: dual utility feeds, dual generators per train, 2N or better UPS, and fully duplicated cooling plant. Equipment content per megawatt of IT load is roughly double a Rated-3 facility
Earthquake resistance
Designed to withstand 7.5 on the Richter scale
Flood resistance
The site sits 14 metres above sea level with a further 2.2 metres of campus elevation — relevant in a city that flooded severely in 2015
Security
Nine-zone security
What this says about CtrlS
The company builds every facility to Rated-4 and describes itself as Asia's largest Rated-4 operator. That is a deliberate positioning choice aimed at customers who cannot tolerate any outage — banks, payment networks, government — and it changes the vendor requirement profile entirely
The commercial consequence
A Rated-4 facility is a better customer for equipment vendors than an equally sized Rated-3 one. Every duplicated train is an extra set of generators, an extra switchboard, an extra chiller. The same 72 MW of IT load supports a materially larger equipment order here than a conventional Indian build
What is not disclosed
The certifying body, the specific tier certification held versus claimed, genset counts, fuel autonomy, UPS topology and PUE
5Liquid cooling and density
The density claim
CtrlS states the park supports high-density GPU workloads of up to 70 kW per rack, using advanced liquid cooling technologies
What 70 kW means
Seven times the density of a conventional Indian enterprise rack at 10 kW, and roughly a third of what Sify's Chennai 02 campus claims at 200 kW. It is a genuine AI-capable specification, not a relabelled colocation build
The cooling implication
70 kW per rack cannot be handled by air. It requires direct-to-chip cold plates or an equivalent liquid path, with CDUs, manifolds, coolant distribution and leak detection — plus conventional chilled water for the enterprise halls on the same campus
Why the substation matters here too
Liquid cooling reduces the air-handling energy but not the IT load. A 70 kW rack still needs 70 kW delivered. The 120 MW substation is what makes high density at this site feasible at all
The mixed-use design
The park is used by hyperscalers, enterprises and government. That means density varies by hall — conventional enterprise floors alongside high-density GPU floors — so both cooling categories are installed in the same buildings
What is not disclosed
The proportion of the park fitted for liquid cooling, the number of high-density racks, the CDU specification, and any liquid-cooled hall commissioning date
6Site resilience and context
Why Ambattur
An established industrial estate in western Chennai with existing heavy electrical infrastructure — which is how a 230 kV connection becomes available at all
Chennai market position
India's second-largest data-centre market. About 214 MW of live colocation capacity and 368 MW of pipeline as of H1 2026, with the second-highest submarine cable concentration in the country after Mumbai and the shortest route to Singapore
The competitive cluster
CtrlS at Ambattur sits alongside STT GDC's Ambattur campus (about 40 MW operational, with STT Chennai 4 under way — PRJ-019), while Nxtra (PRJ-011) and Sify (PRJ-028) build at Siruseri. Chennai is effectively two clusters now: Ambattur in the west and Siruseri in the south
Employment and tax claims
500 direct and 9,000 indirect jobs claimed; projected GST revenue of ₹200 crore direct and ₹3,000 crore indirect annually; ₹800 crore of annual power revenue to the state
The indirect investment figure
₹50,000 crore of "indirect investment" is claimed against ₹4,000 crore direct. That is a 12.5× multiplier and it should be treated as an economic-impact estimate, not as project capex. It is not expenditure on this campus
Grid context
CtrlS states city capacity was expected to double by 2026, with ongoing projects adding 2.6 million sq ft (134 MW) by 2026 and a further 2.5 million sq ft (130 MW) planned for 2027–28
7Timeline
- CtrlS unveils the Chennai Datacenter Park: ₹4,000 crore, two buildings, about 1 million sq ft, 72 MW IT load. Building 1 stated as fully booked for Q2 2024 operation; Building 2 at 27 MW for the second half of 2024.
- Building 1 (Chennai DC1) enters service.
- The campus is inaugurated by Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin. ₹4,000 crore direct and ₹50,000 crore claimed indirect investment stated. 72 MW IT load, 230 kV GIS substation at 120 MW, liquid cooling to 70 kW per rack, 7.5 Richter earthquake resistance, 14 m above sea level.
- Building 2 (Chennai DC2) is inaugurated — 27 MW across 290,000 sq ft on a ground-plus-ten structure.
- CPP Investments commits up to ₹7,000 crore to CtrlS, including ₹3,000 crore for a hyperscale joint venture — see PRJ-031.
- Project trackers list the campus as under construction for a second phase, with a 2026–27 window. The two original buildings are delivered
- Any third building. The 120 MW substation leaves physical headroom for roughly another 20–25 MW of IT load
8Procurement
Read this before the table
Both announced buildings are delivered, so those packages are placed. What remains is fit-out, the high-density liquid-cooled halls, and any third building that the 120 MW substation already permits. Everything below is a Gridvik estimate.
Procurement window and scope
Gridvik assessment · 22 Oct 2026
Order window
Fit-out now; new build undated. The substation carries roughly 20–25 MW of real headroom beyond the current 72 MW of IT load, so a third building is physically possible without a new grid application. No such building has been announced.
Procurement heat
Medium. Both original buildings are complete and were fully booked early — a strong commercial outcome for CtrlS that also means the base-build opportunity has passed.
Who buys
CtrlS Datacenters centrally. Note the two buying centres created by the CPP joint venture (PRJ-031) — future hyperscale campuses may be procured through the JV rather than the parent
DG / gensets (indicative)
At 72 MW of IT with Rated-4 fault tolerance, expect of the order of 185–225 gensets of 2,000–2,250 kVA class — noticeably more than an N+1 facility of the same size, because every train is duplicated. Tamil Nadu requires CPCB IV+ compliance
UPS (indicative)
Rated-4 implies 2N UPS at minimum, so installed UPS capacity is roughly double the IT load. For 72 MW that is of the order of 144 MW of installed UPS plant — the single largest electrical package on the site
Cooling (indicative)
Published as liquid cooling for GPUs up to 70 kW per rack, alongside conventional chilled water for enterprise floors. Expect CDUs, cold plates, manifolds, leak detection, and a duplicated chilled-water plant with an air-cooled or hybrid heat-rejection strategy given Chennai's water position
Categories in scope
230 kV GIS switchgear and power transformers · DG and gensets · 2N UPS · PDUs and busway · chillers and CRAH · CDUs, cold plates and manifolds · leak detection · high-density racks and containment · structured cabling and four-path fibre · fire detection and suppression · nine-zone access control · BMS/DCIM · fuel storage · water treatment
Decision role
Public decision roles — in GridFeed
Stage-change history
Dated change log — in GridFeed
All estimates are labelled as estimates. No tender dates claimed, no private contact data published.
Unlock GridFeed →
9Assumptions and method
What is sourced
Campus and building capacities, built-up area, substation rating and voltage, Rated-4 status, density claim, earthquake and flood specifications, investment figures, inauguration date and dignitary, jobs and tax claims
What is derived
The headroom calculation, the equipment implications of Rated-4, and the procurement section
Capacity figure used
72 MW campus IT load, containing Building 1 at 45 MW and Building 2 at 27 MW. The 28 MW variant in one report is recorded and not adopted
Additivity rule
Non-additive as a campus aggregate. It contains both buildings and is never summed with a child building record or with CtrlS' portfolio figures (PRJ-031)
Investment
₹4,000 crore direct is recorded as project capex. The ₹50,000 crore indirect figure is presented as a claimed economic-impact estimate, not as capex
10Limits and open questions
Certification basis
Described as "Rated-4 compliant" rather than certified. Which certifying body and whether a certificate is held is not stated
Building 2 capacity
27 MW in the operator's release; 28 MW in one report of the inauguration
Design detail
No PUE, genset count, fuel autonomy, UPS topology, chiller architecture or rack count published
Liquid cooling extent
70 kW per rack is a design capability. How much of the park is actually fitted for it is not disclosed, and no liquid-cooled hall commissioning is documented
Substation
120 MW is the rating. The sanctioned load, utility and tariff are not disclosed
Next building
No third building announced, despite substation headroom
What we will not claim
No PUE, no tenant names, no liquid-cooling deployment, no third-phase plan, and no equipment brands
11Sources
This record was compiled entirely from publicly available sources, cross-checked against one another.
CtrlS Datacenters press releases and Chennai facility page·ET Telecom·Economic Times·The Hindu·The Hindu BusinessLine·Business Standard·DatacenterDynamics·Indian Infrastructure·Voice & Data·Outlook Business·w.media·PeeringDB·DC Market Insights·CtrlS Frost & Sullivan brochure·FlexiCloud India tracker
Gridvik does not publish source URLs on record pages; citations are retained in the internal source register and are available on request.
What this page is, and what it is not
This is a public-source record of a delivered Rated-4 campus. Capacity, substation, resilience and investment facts are attributed to CtrlS and the outlets that reported them.
The procurement section is labelled as estimation. No tender insider information, no private contact data, no operator-paid placement. Corrections are free and published with a date.