Delhi data centre fire may have destroyed equipment worth hundreds of crores
Hundreds of crores of rupees in equipment, data and revenue losses may have resulted from a fire at a data centre in Delhi’s Greater Kailash
Hundreds of crores of rupees in equipment, data and revenue losses may have resulted from a fire at a data centre in Delhi’s Greater Kailash on Friday (June 5, 2026), impacting traffic from Google, Netflix, and multiple local internet service providers in the Capital Region, companies affected by the blaze told The Hindu. While no loss of life was reported, key network routers and servers belonging to local providers and big tech companies were damaged. Fires at data centres, where multiple companies bring their own equipment for “co-location,” are rare. Industry best practices typically require facilities to douse fires with inert gas systems, and data centres usually have limited on-site presence of people during their day-to-day operations. Those safeguards, however, may not have been enough at ST Telemedia GDC’s facility, which operated out of a building owned by Tata Communications Ltd. STT GDC has “leased the premises,” Tata Communications said in a stock exchange filing on Friday. Blaze spreads At least two local networks The Hindu spoke with found themselves cut off from the internet at around 2.30 a.m. The Delhi Fire Service said it received its first call regarding the blaze on the third floor of the building at 2.45 a.m., adding it reached the spot at 2:49 a.m. The fire started in the battery room on the third-floor and was categorised “Make 4,” denoting a massive blaze, DFS Assistant Divisional Officer Y.S. Meena said.
“At approximately 2:30 a.m., we got a call from our team that the network was totally down,” said Sanjay Singh of R2 Net, a local internet provider. Another ISP saidthat its network went down around the same time. “Normally, they use some type of gas for firefighting, but the stock they had was not enough,” Mr. Singh claimed. STT GDC, which is in the process of being acquired by investment firm KKR and Singaporean telecom operator Singtel, said in a statement to The Hindu that “Delhi Fire Services personnel were on site at approximately 02:45 hours.” “Based on our preliminary assessment, the primary impact is limited to customers in one data hall,” an STT GDC spokesperson said. “The incident remains under review, and it would be premature to comment on the cause at this stage.” Video footage shared by one client and reviewed by The Hindu showed equipment in a server room completely blackened and charred as three fire tenders were seen standing outside the building. Ten tenders were deployed overall, and the firefighting operation lasted several hours, even though the damage was eventually confined to the third floor. Two firefighters were injured during the operation. A local policeman said prima facie, it seemed that the fire was caused by a short circuit. Data loss “On one floor, there are about 200 racks of servers,” Mr. Singh said, adding, “Fifty of those racks belonged to Google.
The BriefWire