A fire at a New Delhi data centre owned by Singapore's ST Telemedia and Tata Communications resulted in 'extensive damage' to portions of the facility, making data recovery difficult, according to a Tata letter obtained by Reuters. Following the early morning fire at the STT Global Data Centres India plant on June 5, Tata Communications informed Indian stock markets that it has initiated business continuity processes to minimise interruptions. In a June 15 letter to clients, Novamesh of the Tata Communications business informed that the fire was 'so severe that it caused extensive damage' to areas of the facility and delayed services. STT Global Data Centres India stated that its initial assessment showed the impact was limited to a single data hall and associated infrastructure, with the rest of the facility continuing to operate normally. According to The Hindu, hundreds of crores of rupees in equipment, data and revenue losses may have resulted from the fire, with traffic from Google, Netflix and multiple local internet service providers in the National Capital Region affected. The fire started around 2:47 AM in the battery room of the facility, which sits inside Next-Gen Tower and is operated by ST Telemedia on premises leased by Tata Communications. Television footage from the facility on the day of the fire showed severe damage, including burnt server racks, destroyed electrical infrastructure, collapsed ceiling panels and debris scattered across the premises. The fire affected roughly 200 square feet of the battery room and coincided with a heatwave gripping northern India, which had already been contributing to fire incidents across the region.
Matrix Cellular, an Indian data centre client that offers worldwide SIM cards, told Reuters that it is having difficulty recovering two decades' worth of data that was lost in the fire. According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, the event is also connected to some of Google Cloud's sporadic network outages in India. In the letter to Matrix Cellular that Reuters examined, it stated, 'Despite our ongoing best efforts to recover the data, the severity of the damage ... presents significant challenges to the recovery of the affected data and systems'. CEO Gaurav Khanna told Reuters that Matrix may no longer have access to more than 20 years' worth of accumulated operational and business data kept in the impacted Tata data centre. Matrix lost customer data, usage records, support history, and billing and vendor-related data in the fire, adding that sales have fallen sharply due to the outage. As per The Hindu, 'It's been 20 days and they have not restored backup. If there is a backup it should have been restored by now,' Khanna said, expressing frustration over the delayed recovery process. According to Reuters, the incident has affected a number of customers, with Matrix potentially losing access to over 20 years of accumulated operational and business data stored in the affected Tata data centre.
Google stated on its occurrences page on June 9 that 'a fire at a third-party data centre facility required an emergency power shutdown of networking equipment' without mentioning Tata. The insider, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the situation, stated that Google's modifications were related to the same STT-Tata website. Google stated in its most recent update on June 23 that there was currently no fix and cautioned users that they would experience latency problems until the facility was completely restored. In a June 23 email seen by Reuters, STT Global Data Centres India told R2 Net that a detailed assessment and independent technical root cause analysis was under way and expected to take five to seven weeks. According to The Hindu, Google Cloud flagged network disruptions in India linked to the same facility, with no workaround available as of June 23. The fire has also had a wider impact on cloud infrastructure, with some intermittent network disruptions experienced by Google Cloud customers in India linked to the incident, as reported by Reuters. Google Cloud users across major Indian metropolitan areas experienced reduced network capacity and elevated latency in the fire's aftermath, with the damage not confined to one company's server racks.
According to its CEO, Sanjay Singh, another client, Indian internet service provider R2 Net, is expected to lose $2 million as a result of the outage, in addition to losing commercial clients. He told Reuters that 'vital tracking data stored in servers and used by law enforcement to monitor illegal internet activity' was impacted by the fire. R2 Net faces estimated losses of $2 million and the potential loss of customers due to the disruption. The data centre had a 'state-of-the-art fire protection and suppression system', according to the joint venture's website, but the fire still caused extensive damage. The Hindu reports that the fire occurred in lithium battery units, though the cause has not been conclusively established, with ten fire tenders deployed and the firefighting operation lasting several hours. While the exact cause of the fire remains under investigation, Delhi Fire Services officials indicated that lithium battery units may have been involved, with the company saying an independent technical root cause analysis is underway. For stakeholders in Tata Communications specifically, the damage estimate in the hundreds of crores signals a material event, with insurance claims, service-level agreement penalties, and customer migration costs could compound beyond the direct hardware losses.
According to Delhi fire authorities, the fire started in lithium battery units, although its exact cause is still unknown. STT Global Data Centres India said in a statement it was supporting affected customers, including by moving them to alternate capacity where possible, and that an 'independent technical root cause analysis is underway'. Tata Communications did not respond to Reuters queries. The fire adds to challenges for the Tata group, which recently disclosed a cybersecurity incident after a ransomware website published what it said were client documents linked to Apple and Tesla on the dark web. Tata Communications says 300 Fortune 500 companies are among its clients and that it connects businesses to 80% of the world's cloud giants. ST Telemedia acquired a 74% stake in Tata Communications' data centre business in 2016, and the joint venture now operates 30 data centres across 10 Indian cities. Investigations into the fire found no direct connections to cryptocurrency exchanges, blockchain nodes, or digital asset operations housed in the facility, despite India being home to one of the world's largest populations of crypto users and the country's exchanges processing significant daily volume.
