Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is currently mulling to establish its inaugural data centre in India, the media has reported. This move aims to address the growing demand for its short video feature, Instagram Reels, in its largest market, says a report by Money Control, citing sources familiar with the matter.
"Meta is evaluating deploying a small data centre. It could be a cache-focussed 10-20 megawatt data centre," the report added, quoting a person familiar with the matter.
According to the report, the social networking behemoth is anticipated to commence a feasibility study in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024.
If Meta proceeds with setting up its inaugural data centre in the country, with a capacity ranging between 10-20MW, the investment in the project could fall within the range of Rs 500- Rs1,200 crore, the report further added.
Notably, this comes barely hours after a major outage plunged social networking giant Meta's platforms into darkness, affecting billions of users worldwide, and in India.
Meta-owned Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp stopped functioning, causing widespread disconnection and frustration among users globally. Reports suggested that it took several hours before services were fully restored. The outage dealt a severe blow to Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, not only in terms of user engagement but also financially, with experts highlighting the company's substantial losses.
Meta, saw its market value drop by 1.5 per cent due to outage issues affecting a portion of its 3.98 billion global users across its social media platforms. This decline amounted to a staggering $18 billion loss, which translates to approximately £14 billion, the media has reported. Notably, around 10 am ET (8:30 pm IST), a flood of issues were reported, coinciding with a 1.5 per cent drop in Meta's share price. However, this decline has since worsened, with shares falling by 1.6 per cent.
A statement read: “resolved the issue as quickly as possible for everyone who was impacted, and we apologize for any inconvenience."