BT Exclusive: Schneider Electric sees exponential growth from data centre boom in India

French automation giant Schneider Electric sees exponential growth in its data centre business in India as the country scales up capacity over the coming years.

“In India, our data centre business is not the biggest yet. India has built only 1.5 gigawatt of data centre capacity so far. The country has plans to build 6–8 GW. In the next 3 to 5 years, there is an opportunity for it to become the biggest business,” says Deepak Sharma, MD & CEO, & Zone President, Greater India, Schneider Electric.

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Globally, 30% of Schneider Electric’s 40 billion euros business comes from data centres.

India is Schneider Electric’s third-largest market and a global innovation hub with over 38,000 employees, 31 factories, and exports to more than 30 countries. Last year, the grid-to-plug energy management giant acquired the remaining 35% stake of Schneider Electric India from Temasek for 5.5 billion euros to reach full ownership. This is expected to speed up the decision-making process in India.

“Our building and distribution business is the biggest in India currently. But from a growth perspective, I think generation, data centre and homes will see the next strongest growth cycle,” Sharma says.

Even as data centre business booms, Sharma expects other businesses to continue to grow. “To build data centres in India, we have to build buildings, roads, hospitals and infrastructure. I don’t think data centres will be the only segment that will fire. Housing, airport, metros and infrastructure are important for Schneider in India,” he explains.

India is ramping up its data centre capacity as 20% of all data is generated and consumed in India while only 3% is stored in India.

Schneider Electric has witnessed double-digit growth in home and automation businesses, says Sharma. “Affordable technology, cost frugality, and the speed of adaptation makes India unique. So, most of our products are now designed and manufactured in India. We export to 30 countries from India, including the US,” he adds.

The company is betting big on “open automation”, where companies don’t have to stick to a single vendor. “In ‘open automation’, where any you don’t have to be married to any single company. You can take a software piece from us, which is built on any platform, and then you can re-engineer your whole industrial plant,” says Sharma.

On rising commodity prices, particularly copper, Sharma says it has been a challenge across the industry. “We use lot of copper and silver in our products. Whatever cost goes up, we have to pass it on to the market,” he says. “If all our suppliers and ecosystem suffer, we suffer. If the West Asia war continues, we see some challenges on plastics and transportation,” Sharma adds.