As India’s digital economy accelerates, data centres are emerging as the silent backbone powering the next wave of innovation across AI, fintech, manufacturing, and regional tech ecosystems. In this context, Jatinder Singh, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at STT GDC India brings nearly three decades of strategic leadership across global tech firms like Microsoft, Wipro, and HP, and is currently driving enterprise transformation through advanced digital infrastructure. Jatinder also serves as the JAPAC Lead for US Hyperscalers and Co-Chair of the ASSOCHAM DC Council, advocating industry collaboration in India’s evolving digital infrastructure landscape.
Jatinder is spearheading efforts to democratize access to AI-ready infrastructure for India’s mid-market and SMB sectors. In this exclusive interaction, Jatinder unpacks the strategic role of regional expansion in Eastern India, STT’s future-proofing initiatives for AI and sustainability, and how customer-centric innovation is helping them stay ahead in an increasingly competitive data centre landscape.
How are data centres like STT GDC India becoming a catalyst for digital transformation among India’s mid-market and SMBs?
Our data centres are democratizing access to advanced digital infrastructure that was previously only available to large enterprises. For India's mid-market companies and SMBs, we provide ready-to-deploy AI-ready colocation infrastructure without the massive capital investments traditionally required. This is particularly transformative in sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, and regional commerce where organizations can now leverage high-density computing power for data analytics, AI model training, and enterprise applications.
Our colocation model allows these businesses to operate in the same high-reliability environments as global tech companies, with access to our carrier-neutral connectivity ecosystem. This is eliminating technological barriers to innovation for smaller players, essentially providing them enterprise-grade digital foundations through a scalable, OpEx-focused model rather than prohibitive CapEx investments.
With your recent expansion in Kolkata, what strategic importance does East India hold in your long-term infrastructure roadmap?
Eastern India represents a significant yet under-served market with tremendous digital growth potential. Our INR 450 crore investment in New Town, Kolkata creates Eastern India's most advanced AI-ready infrastructure, addressing an important gap in the region's digital ecosystem. This aligns with our strategy of establishing presence in traditional technology hubs, and in emerging corridors where digital adoption is accelerating.
The Kolkata campus is particularly exciting for its potential to foster localized innovation. We expect to see considerable interest from startups developing Bengali and other East Indian language based AI models. The region's strong academic institutions produce excellent technical talent that until now has often migrated to other technology hubs. We're enabling Eastern India to develop its own distinctive digital economy with applications specifically addressing regional needs, particularly in sectors like agriculture technology, healthcare accessibility, and vernacular digital services by establishing world-class digital infrastructure locally.
As one of India’s largest data centre operators with 25% market share, how is STT GDC India future-proofing its infrastructure for high-density AI workloads and sustainable growth?
Future-proofing is central to our infrastructure strategy, particularly as AI workloads transform computing requirements. We're implementing this through multi-dimensional innovation across power, cooling, and design flexibility.
Our facilities, including the new Kolkata campus, are engineered with considerably higher power density capabilities than traditional data centres, supporting up to 25 MW of IT load with reliable power architecture. This design anticipates the intensive computational demands of next-generation AI systems.
For cooling, we've moved beyond conventional approaches to implement low-PUE systems with closed-loop cooling designs that can efficiently handle high-density rack configurations. Our facilities are built with the flexibility to deploy liquid cooling technologies as AI workloads continue to intensify. These systems are more efficient for high-performance computing and align with our sustainability commitment.
Perhaps most importantly, we've embraced modular design principles that allow us to rapidly adapt as technology evolves. Rather than building static infrastructure, our campuses can be reconfigured to accommodate emerging requirements. This can be done either by integrating direct liquid cooling for AI accelerators or adapting to new interconnection paradigms as edge computing evolves.
AI adoption is reshaping data demand. How is STT GDC India enabling enterprises to tap into AI-ready infrastructure without compromising on power, cooling, or latency needs?
AI is fundamentally changing infrastructure requirements across dimensions of power, cooling, connectivity, and operational flexibility. We're meeting these challenges through purpose-built designs that specifically address the unique characteristics of AI workloads.
For power and cooling, our newest facilities implement high-density zones that support the concentrated compute resources needed for AI model training and inference. These zones feature specialized cooling systems that can manage the thermal challenges of GPU clusters and AI accelerators. Our power architecture ensures the stability these systems require, with redundancies that maintain consistent availability even under intensive computational loads.
On the latency front, our strategic facility locations and carrier-neutral approach ensure that AI applications can access data with minimal delay – critical for applications that rely on real-time processing. We've also engineered our network architecture to optimize data movement between storage systems and compute resources, reducing the 'data gravity' challenges that can hamper AI performance.
Beyond the technical infrastructure, we provide operational flexibility that aligns with the experimental nature of many AI initiatives. Organizations can start with smaller deployments and scale rapidly as projects move from proof-of-concept to production, avoiding the capital constraints that might otherwise limit innovation.
Given the increasing competition and consolidation in India’s data centre space, how is STT GDC India ensuring differentiation and long-term customer loyalty?
With growing competition in India's data centre landscape, our differentiation strategy focuses on three core elements: technical excellence, customer-centric flexibility, and our established reliability record spanning over two decades in the Indian market.
Technical differentiation begins with our infrastructure certifications like the TIA-942 Rated-3 Design credentials that our facilities maintain. These aren't merely compliance checkmarks but reflect our comprehensive approach to reliability engineering. Our forward-thinking power architectures with N+2C designs provide measurably higher reliability than many competing facilities.
For customer experience, we've developed specialized teams focused on different customer segments – from hyperscalers to enterprises to the growing AI startup ecosystem. This allows us to provide tailored solutions rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. Our scale, with 30 facilities across 10 cities and 400 MW of IT load capacity, gives customers confidence in our ability to support their growth across regions.
Perhaps most importantly, our environmental leadership with commitments to carbon neutrality by 2030 ensures that customers can meet their own sustainability mandates through our infrastructure. As ESG requirements intensify across sectors, our proven sustainability initiatives become increasingly valuable to organizations balancing digital growth with environmental responsibility.
How do you see the evolving role of data centres in powering India’s digital economy—from fintech and government services to health-tech and beyond?
Data centres are evolving from basic hosting infrastructure into integrated digital foundations that enable entire economic ecosystems. In India's context, this transformation is particularly profound as digital services become the primary delivery mechanism for essential services across sectors.
In fintech, our infrastructure is supporting the real-time transaction capabilities that underpin UPI and the broader digital payments revolution. For government services, data centres like ours provide the secure, high-availability environments necessary for Digital India initiatives that are transforming citizen experiences.
Healthcare represents one of the most exciting frontiers, with our AI-ready infrastructure enabling advanced diagnostics through medical imaging AI, telemedicine platforms that extend specialist care to underserved regions, and research computing for pharmaceutical development. Our Kolkata facility will specifically support regional language AI models that can make these services accessible to broader populations.
What's particularly exciting is how these sectors are increasingly interconnected through shared digital infrastructure. The same data centre resources supporting fintech innovations are enabling Healthtech advancements and smart city initiatives. This convergence is creating network effects that accelerate India's broader digital transformation.
From a leadership standpoint, how are you aligning sales and marketing strategy with the evolving demands of enterprise AI, sustainability mandates, and hybrid multi-cloud adoption?
Our sales and marketing approach has evolved significantly to address the complex, multi-dimensional decision-making now driving data centre selection. We've shifted from traditional infrastructure selling to becoming trusted advisors on AI readiness, sustainability strategy, and hybrid architecture optimization.
For enterprise AI enablement, we've developed specialized teams with expertise in the infrastructure requirements of different AI workloads. This allows us to engage in more sophisticated conversations about compute density planning, interconnection architecture, and scalability road mapping that AI initiatives require.
Sustainability has become central to our value proposition rather than a secondary consideration. We now quantify and communicate the environmental benefits of our low-PUE designs, water conservation systems, and renewable energy initiatives as core elements of our offering. Our carbon neutrality roadmap for 2030 provides customers with clear visibility into how their infrastructure decisions align with their own environmental mandates.
For hybrid multi-cloud environments, we've repositioned our connectivity-rich data centres as integration hubs rather than simply colocation facilities. Our marketing emphasizes how our infrastructure enables seamless data movement between private infrastructure and multiple cloud providers, optimizing both performance and economics.