Kolkata DC 1 opened on 12 August 2025 with 16 MW of IT load across 1,137 racks — 14.1 kW a rack — and a published PUE of 1.40. That combination makes it the densest and most efficient building in this registry, and it is in New Town, Kolkata, not Mumbai. Eastern India’s first Rated-4 data centre was built for ₹370 crore in a phase that took roughly a year, and the operator says its first customer was an American hyperscaler.
1At a glance
214 kW a rack in Kolkata
This is the number that makes the page worth reading. Everything else about the building is ordinary; fourteen kilowatts a cabinet is not.
| Facility | MW | Racks | kW a rack | City |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CtrlS Kolkata DC 1 | 16 | 1,137 | 14.1 | Kolkata |
| Nxtra Mumbai MUM 4 | 42 | 3,600 | 11.7 | Mumbai |
| Nxtra Pune PUN 4 | 24 | 2,500 | 9.6 | Pune |
| CtrlS Patna Edge DC 2 | 11.6 | 1,670 | 7.2 | Patna |
| Nxtra Bengaluru BLR 1 | 5.4 | 2,000 | 2.7 | Bengaluru |
| Nxtra NCR 2 Noida 81 | 3.5 | 1,500 | 2.3 | Noida |
The implication is not that Kolkata is an AI hub. It is that the operator built a single, dense, new building with a specification that will survive the next five years of rack power, while the incumbents’ legacy halls run at a fifth of that density and cannot be converted.
For anyone selling cooling, power distribution or DCIM, the ranking above is a call list in order of technical ambition. For anyone buying the intelligence, it is the correction to a lazy assumption: dense capacity is appearing in tier-2 eastern India as well as in the Mumbai and Chennai corridors.
Most Indian operators publish a PUE of 1.5 or 1.55. This one publishes 1.40, at a site with 16 MW of load and a tropical climate.
At 16 MW, the 0.1 difference between 1.40 and 1.50 is 1.6 MW of continuous overhead — about 14 GWh a year, and a meaningful line in an electricity bill.
3The building and the three conflicts
The operator describes its own building three different ways depending on which page you land on. None of the differences is large; all of them matter to a valuation.
| Field | The inauguration material | The corporate site |
|---|---|---|
| Racks | 1,137 | 1,044 |
| Structure | G+2 with a technical floor | G+1 with a terrace |
| Security zones | nine-zone | eight-zone |
| Built-up area | about 44,000 sq ft | 0.44 lakh sq ft, in agreement |
| IT load | 16 MW | 16 MW, in agreement |
| PUE | 1.40 | not stated |
Ninety-three racks is the gap on cabinet count — about 8% — and the structural difference of one floor is consistent with it: either the building has an additional floor that was value-engineered out, or the corporate page was written before the final design. Both figures are live on the operator’s own site today.
An earlier announcement put the phase-one building at over 90,000 square feet. The built area now quoted is 44,000. That is a bigger discrepancy than the rack count and it points at the same thing: a specification that changed between the 2024 announcement and the 2025 opening.
Gridvik records the inauguration figures — 16 MW, 1,137 racks, PUE 1.40 — because they are the most recent and the most specific, and notes that the operator’s own site disagrees with itself. A buyer who needs 1,100 cabinets and finds 1,044 available has lost a month.
4How a phase gets built in a year
| When | What |
|---|---|
| 2022 | five acres allotted at Bengal Silicon Valley on a 99-year lease |
| 2023 | construction begins after registrations |
| June 2024 | the ₹2,200 crore campus and the 16 MW first phase are announced publicly; the building is described as over 90,000 square feet and due to go live within months |
| 12 August 2025 | the building opens at 16 MW, 1,137 racks and a PUE of 1.40 |
| 2026 | the Digha subsea landing station is expected to become operational, improving international routes |
Roughly eighteen months from announcement to a live 16 MW building on state-leased land is fast for India and it is the strongest argument in this registry that eastern India is not a difficult place to build. The constraint is demand, not construction.
The reported first customer was an “American giant”, which is consistent with a Rated-4 building sold whole or nearly whole. A single hyperscale anchor changes what a building is: white space, contract length and rate card all stop being market questions and become private ones.
5Timeline
- Land allotted on a 99-year lease at Bengal Silicon Valley
- Construction begins on the first building
- A ₹2,200 crore, four-phase, 60 MW-plus campus is announced, with 16 MW due to open in the second quarter of the financial year
- DC 1 opens at 16 MW of IT load and 1,137 racks with a PUE of 1.40 and Rated-4 certification
- The operator’s corporate site shows 1,044 racks, G+1 with a terrace, and eight-zone security
- No occupancy disclosure, no customer name beyond “an American giant”, and no phase-two start date
6Procurement
7Limits and open questions
8Sources
Sources: CtrlS Datacenters press release on the Kolkata inauguration, CtrlS Kolkata data centre page, CtrlS corporate site, Data Center Dynamics on the first phase going operational, Times of India, Business Standard, ETTelecom, TelecomTalk, Indian Infrastructure, DataCenterMap Kolkata listings.