Meta's First Indian Data Center May Be Hosted by Reliance in Tamil Nadu

Meta, the social media conglomerate, is reportedly planning to establish its inaugural data center in India at the Reliance Industries campus in Chennai, according to sources familiar with the situation. This move is aimed at enabling the American company to locally process user-generated content across its key platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The agreement between Meta and RIL was reached following discussions during the pre-wedding festivities of Anant Ambani, the scion of the Ambani family, held in Jamnagar in early March, led by Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta will expand its operations with four to five nodes distributed across various locations in India, enabling quicker data processing in its largest market. Presently, data from Indian users of Meta's products is managed at its data center in Singapore. The establishment of a local data center will not only improve content delivery but also enhance user experience through localized advertisements, reducing transmission costs from global data hubs, according to informed sources.

Situated within Chennai's Ambattur Industrial Estate, the 10-acre campus (MAA10) is a collaborative effort between Brookfield Asset Management, Reliance Industries, and Digital Realty. With a capacity to accommodate up to 100-megawatt (MW) IT load, experts speculate that Meta might be considering local operation of large artificial intelligence (AI) models, especially as government oversight intensifies.

Meta's Llama series, an open-source collection of large language models, stands as a cornerstone for numerous Indian enterprises. These enterprises leverage the Llama series for application development and for refining models trained on their proprietary data. “Meta would aim for greenfield data centres across key regions including Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi NCR, which can suffice its strong infrastructure requirements from fibre to power”, said Neil Shah, partner at technology research firm Counterpoint Research.

With 314.6 million users on Facebook, 350 million on Instagram, and 480 million on WhatsApp in India, the user base nearly doubles that of its home country, the US. Meta Platforms announced that its revenue from click-to-message ads in India, spanning across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, doubled in the September 2023 quarter. “While India has the largest number of users, it is still underpenetrated if you look at the installed smartphone user base, which is close to 850 million. Trying to localize user-generated content and ads is a prudent strategy as it will reduce latency, enhance AI-driven recommendations, and save transmission costs from Singapore and other hubs”, Shah said.

According to Digital Connexion's statement in January during the inauguration of the MAA10 data center campus, it is equipped to accommodate AI language models. A study conducted by CareEdge Ratings suggests that India's data center industry is projected to double its capacity within the next three years. Despite generating 20% of global data, India currently holds only a 3% share of global data center capacity. Nevertheless, this scenario is anticipated to shift as major tech companies such as Meta and Google express intentions to localize data storage within India.