IT’S NOT IN the Electronics City or the Hitech City. Neither in Gurugram nor in Noida. India’s first artificial-intelligence-centric special economic zone is coming up in Nava Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh.
“This initiative will further the visions of Digital India and Make in India,” said Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai. “It will generate employment opportunities for youth and bring technological recognition to the state.”
The plan? A dedicated zone on 13 acres specially designed for the development and operation of AI and computer data-related technologies. The SEZ will also host state-of-the-art computer systems and servers that will run AI systems capable of human-like reasoning. The aim is to make it a hub for major global companies as well as Indian startups to carry out their digital operations.
It is the first industrial park completely focused on AI. The government’s intent is clear—position the state and its capital as the country’s next digital and technological hub by jumping on the AI bandwagon.
But what is its USP? Far away from the IT hubs of the south, the data storage supremacy of Mumbai or the tech and corporate muscle of the NCR hubs, why would anyone come to Chhattisgarh?
“Nava Raipur is the perfect location from the sustainability point, because not only is Chhattisgarh centrally located, it has surplus energy,” said Narendra Sen, CEO of RackBank, an Indore-based data centre infra, cloud computing and AI services company. RackBank is setting up the AI SEZ, investing Rs1,000 crore.
Sen explained the rationale behind betting on this young city instead of data heavyweights like Chennai or Mumbai. “To give you an example, when data travels from [a data centre] in Chennai to Delhi, it takes 30 milliseconds. But when it travels from central India to any part of the country, it takes only 10 milliseconds. That makes it a perfect location!”
Add to that the fact that Chhattisgarh is a power surplus state. Data centres and AI computing require high-power server usage as well as cooling operations for the heavy duty servers, both electricity-intensive. The state government has also chipped in with tax exemptions and other legal relaxations.
There is an additional lure for startups and innovators wanting to work on AI. The project will kick-off with four buildings covering six lakh sqft workspace, not only offering co-location, but also graphic processing units (the heavy duty chips needed to run AI tasks) as a service.
“AI should be affordable and accessible,” said Sen. “Indian startups cannot pay premiums to do their experiments that require expensive chips. So the entire thought process is aligned to how we can make it affordable. That’s why we chose this location to run data centres. The land cost and the operations cost are cheaper compared to any other state in the country.”
The SEZ, dedicated to AI development and operations and data storage and technologies, hopes to attract some of the biggest names in technology both internationally and domestically. “India has some 90 crore internet users. As companies like Facebook have a good chunk of marketshare in India, the processing and inferencing of that data would be in India and their infrastructure should be in India,” said Sen, explaining how the SEZ eventually plans to “enable these large guys” as well as global R&D centres who want to set up base in India.
But that may have to wait, for the initial goal will be to “make India self-reliant in AI”. As Sen said, “Global or local, companies would want to start their training, inferencing and get their workloads hosted. It will be up to us to get these companies on board and lease out space to them.”