L&T bets $1 bn on inhouse forte to face Tata, Adani, Reliance in AI data centres
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI/NEW DELHI : Larsen and Toubro Ltd expects its billion-dollar bet on data centres to pay off, banking on its ability to control costs by owning land, physical infrastructure and servers.
India’s largest engineering and construction company believes this end-to-end ownership will allow it to offer some of the cheapest services to clients, even as demand for data centres accelerates alongside the global push into artificial intelligence. In an interview with Mint, Prashant Jain, head of corporate centre at L&T, reiterated the advantage of the L&T Group, which expects to scale up its data centre capacity from the current 32 megawatt (MW) to 200MW by 2030.
“We have the full stack to be a digital infrastructure provider, which helps in reaching out to large enterprises. Clients, after all, like L&T’s sovereign platform offerings," Jain said.
He said the company will look to rope in its own clients under Vyoma, the data centre business, and also leverage the existing enterprise relations that its two technology outsourcing companies—LTIMindtree and L&T Technology Services (LTTS)—have built over the years. Analysts largely concurred, stating that most conglomerates venturing into data centres will likely look at strategic acquisitions to control cost of operations, given the capital-intensive nature of data centres.
Tighter inhouse control of all stages of a data centre’s operation will bring cost advantage to its offering over other conglomerates in the space—the Adani, Reliance and Tata groups. These conglomerates have ventured into the cutting edge of technology, driven by global clamour for AI and an anticipated demand for local technology infrastructure, as every nation hopes to
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