The company is also exploring partnering with some of the electronics contract manufacturers who have qualified for the IT hardware PLI scheme
American data storage company DataDirect Networks (DDN) is looking to invest around Rs 500 crore in the next five years to manufacture data storage solutions in India.
In an interaction with PTI, DDN Storage General Manager for India and Southeast Asia Atul Vidwansa said that the company is going to scale its Delhi-NCR-based manufacturing unit to achieve 100 petabytes storage capacity by mid-2022 with an initial investment of Rs 100 crore. It expects to start rolling out commercial products from the unit from mid-December.
“We have a factory in place with around 250 people. We expect to roll out the first product from our factory in India from mid-December. Initially, we will make an investment of Rs 100-250 crore to begin, which we will continue doing for five years to a cumulative investment of Rs 500 crore,” Vidwansa said.
Additionally, the company is also evaluating participation in the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for IT hardware.
The company is also exploring partnering with some of the electronics contract manufacturers who have qualified for the scheme.
DDN’s manufacturing unit will be its first facility outside the US. The company will make storage solutions to meet the need of the high-performance computing segment, cloud business and data centres in India.
Vidwansa said the company makes final products used by end-customers by using components from partners and scaling up the production speed of DDN’s manufacturing plant will be dependent on the pace at which the company’s partner ramp up their supplies in India.
“We measure capacity in terms of petabytes, terabytes shipped from the factory. Initially, we plan to ship about 100 petabytes (PB) per year from our factory in India by mid-2022 and we plan to scale it up to 500 PB from early-2023,” Vidwansa said.
The company is looking at partners to start its operations in India.
“The period of first six months is a grace period for us where we will have agreements with all our suppliers, their production delivery capacity in India. The Rs 100-crore investment will be made between now and the middle of the next year,” Vidwansa said.
