Overview
- The data centre in Greater Kailash‑I operated by ST Telemedia and Tata Communications caught fire on June 5, with Delhi fire authorities saying the blaze began in lithium battery units and forcing emergency power shutdowns that damaged networking equipment.
- A Tata unit told clients in a June 15 letter that the fire caused “extensive damage,” and operators say the severity of burned server racks and infrastructure is making recovery of affected data and systems materially difficult.
- Customers report major losses: Matrix Cellular says it may have lost more than 20 years of operational and billing data, R2 Net estimates roughly $2 million in direct losses, and Google Cloud has warned users of ongoing latency with no current workaround.
- STT Global Data Centres India has launched detailed assessments and commissioned an independent technical root‑cause analysis expected in five to seven weeks, while industry reports put physical damage and potential losses in the hundreds of crores of rupees.
- The blaze spotlights risks from lithium battery storage and fire‑suppression in modern data centres and raises questions about service‑level agreements, insurance payouts and the wider business and law‑enforcement systems that depend on onsite data.