Karnataka Digital Economy Mission outlines vision for Mangaluru Cluster

Mangaluru, Karnataka: The Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) has released a vision document highlighting plans to transform Mangaluru Cluster—which includes Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Uttara Kannada, and Kodagu districts—into a global data centre hub. The initiative aims to leverage undersea cable connectivity to strengthen Mangaluru’s position in the international digital infrastructure landscape.

Undersea cable routes to enhance global competitiveness

According to the KDEM document, direct landing stations and subsea cable routes will provide low-latency, high-capacity international bandwidth, making the hub globally competitive for hyperscalers, cloud providers, and AI-driven enterprises.

Three cable route options have been proposed:

  1. Middle East and Europe route: Oman/UAE → Mangaluru → onward to Chennai/Singapore, providing a direct low-latency path from West Asia and Europe, bypassing congested Mumbai landing stations.
  2. South East Asia extension route: Singapore → Colombo → Mangaluru → onward to Middle East/Africa, serving as a Bengaluru+1 backup for hyperscalers and routing traffic to Southeast Asia.
  3. Regional loop: Chennai ↔ Kochi ↔ Mangaluru, combining terrestrial and subsea connections for redundancy.

These routes aim to ensure robust and reliable connectivity for international data traffic, catering to global digital enterprises.

Complementing Bengaluru as a strategic hub

The vision document under KDEM’s Beyond Bengaluru initiative emphasises Mangaluru as a strategic hub for next-generation data centres. With its coastal location, emerging digital infrastructure, renewable energy ecosystem, and skilled talent pool, Mangaluru will complement Bengaluru as a ‘Bengaluru+1’ site and serve as a resilient backup for global capability centres (GCCs).

Job creation and economic impact

The establishment of the Mangaluru data centre hub is projected to generate over 25,000 direct and indirect jobs across multiple sectors. These include:

  • Construction and infrastructure: 8,000 jobs (civil works, electrical, cooling, logistics)
  • IT/BT and cloud services: 7,000 jobs (data centre operations, AI infrastructure management, cloud engineering)
  • Operations and maintenance: 5,000 jobs (facilities management, power systems, security)
  • Renewable energy and utilities: 3,000 jobs (green power projects, grid integration, cooling solutions)
  • Ancillary industries: 2,000 jobs (transport, food, services, SMEs supporting the data centre ecosystem)

Giga-scale data centre cluster

The 54-page KDEM document envisions Mangaluru as a giga-scale data centre cluster with planned capacity exceeding 1 GW over the next decade. The initiative’s “Grid-to-Chip” strategy integrates renewable energy (wind, solar, hydro) with advanced cooling, high-density compute, and chip-level optimisation for AI and cloud workloads, positioning Mangaluru as a future-ready data hub.

Minister for Electronics, IT, and Biotechnology Priyank Kharge released the document on September 24 in Mangaluru, highlighting the strategic importance of the cluster for Karnataka’s digital economy.