Data Center Investment Thesis: Analytical Backbone for a Southeast Asia Market Entry

Shashwat joined a project for a global tech provider that was evaluating data center infrastructure investment across three Southeast Asian markets. The client was early in its research and needed a structured analytical foundation before committing capital at a scale running into multiple billions.

He owned the macroeconomic analysis for all three countries, covering GDP, real gross value added broken down across roughly ten sectors, inflation trends, and an eight-year forward forecast from 2022 to 2030. Alongside this, he built the financial analysis layer and contributed the geopolitical stability assessment, which was a critical input given the scale of the intended investment.

For the third country, Shashwat took on the data center market sizing independently. Two senior consultants had completed the sizing for the first two countries, and he studied their methodology, absorbed the framework, and applied it to the third market without direct supervision.

He also ran the competitive benchmarking of companies operating in the data center and liquid cooling space across the three markets, evaluating liquid cooling technologies against traditional cooling and modeling scalability trade-offs.

After collating the macroeconomic, financial, geopolitical, and market sizing outputs, the team ranked the three countries across all parameters. Shashwat's analysis supported the recommendation of Singapore as the primary investment destination, on the basis of its macroeconomic stability, favorable financial profile, and geopolitical reliability.