Amazon adds four more Powai acres, taking its Mumbai data-centre campus to 13.5

Amazon Data Services has pre-leased four acres in Powai from Larsen and Toubro for data centre expansion, committing more than Rs 650 crore in rent over a term running to February 2044. The starting monthly rent is about Rs 2.76 crore with a 3 per cent annual escalation, alongside a lease premium of about Rs 72 crore and 24 rent-free months spread across the tenure.

It is the company's third lease on the same Powai campus, following 5.5 acres in 2022 and four acres in 2023, taking its footprint there to about 13.5 acres. Amazon has separately signalled a multi-billion-dollar expansion of AWS capacity across Mumbai and Hyderabad.

The significance for MMR is competitive. Data centres have become a serious bidder for the same scarce, power-served, fibre-connected land that office and residential developers want. Powai, the Palava belt and parts of Navi Mumbai have absorbed most of this demand because they combine grid capacity, connectivity and proximity to the cable landing infrastructure on the west coast.

The lease structure is worth noting on its own. Long tenure, built-in escalation and a large upfront premium look closer to infrastructure underwriting than conventional commercial leasing - and deals of that shape tend to anchor land values in the surrounding pocket for years rather than quarters.