RJio to Set Up $142M Data Center in Eastern India

Reliance Jio, India's newest service provider, is planning to invest 10 billion Indian rupees ($142.6 million) to set up a data center in Kolkata in the eastern part of India.

Media reports suggest the company has applied to build the data center on 40 acres of land. It is not clear by when this center will be operational.

Reliance Jio has recently launched services for the enterprise market and is trying to capture a bigger share of India's growing market for cloud services.

It had initially planned to set up 14 data centers across India and already has one running at its campus in Navi Mumbai.

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RJio is also trying to become a government-approved cloud service provider. In this market, it would be competing against Amazon, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Hewlett Packard Enterprise and archrival Bharti Airtel Ltd. (Mumbai: BHARTIARTL), which owns eight data centers through its Nxtra subsidiary. Authorities have said they plan to approve 15 companies for the provision of cloud services to various public-sector organizations.

Setting up data centers should also help RJio to meet India's stringent requirements for storing customer information inside the country. Internet content providers such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) have recently set up Indian data centers to comply with Indian legislation.

— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading