Modi Opens RBI's Rs 169 Crore Tier IV Data Centre in Odisha, Its Second After Navi Mumbai, Plus a Cybersecurity Institute

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday inaugurated a new data centre for the Reserve Bank of India at Info Valley-II in Jatni, on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. A cybersecurity training institute for the banking and financial sector opened on the same campus. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra and Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi were among those present.

The facility cost about Rs 169 crore (some reports put it at Rs 170 crore) and sits on 18.55 acres. It is the RBI's second data centre, after the one in Navi Mumbai.

What the Data Centre Does

The new centre will hold data on transactions that run through India's core payment rails: UPI, NEFT and RTGS. Its main job is resilience. If the Navi Mumbai site is hit by a cyberattack, a power or network failure, or a natural disaster, the Odisha facility is meant to keep the central bank's critical payment and settlement systems running.

The site has Uptime Institute Tier IV certification, the highest grade in that framework. Tier IV facilities are designed to be fault tolerant, meaning a single equipment failure or planned maintenance should not take the service down. For a central bank whose systems process crores of payments a day, that matters more than raw computing power.

Location was part of the planning. The Jatni site was chosen in part because it lies away from high-risk seismic zones and from India's sensitive international borders. Placing a second site far from Mumbai also cuts the risk that one regional event could knock out both.

The foundation stone was laid in March 2023 by Shaktikanta Das, the RBI Governor at the time.

A Training Institute Focused on AI and Quantum

The second facility is a cybersecurity training institute aimed at people who work in banking, financial services and insurance. It will run training, research and skill-building programmes, with a focus on newer technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Both cut two ways for banks. AI tools can spot unusual transaction patterns and flag fraud faster than manual checks, but attackers use the same tools. Quantum computing could eventually break some of the encryption that protects financial data today, which is why regulators around the world are starting to plan for so-called post-quantum security. A dedicated institute gives the RBI a place to build that know-how within the sector instead of relying only on outside vendors.

Why This Matters Now

India's digital payments boom has made the plumbing behind it a target. As more salaries, bills, subsidies and small-business payments move to UPI and bank transfers, a long outage or a successful attack on core systems would hit far more people than it would have a decade ago. Cyber fraud, mule accounts and data theft are already constant problems for banks and police.

In his remarks, Modi tied the project to the wider shift to digital finance. He pointed to direct benefit transfers, which send government payments straight into recipients' bank accounts, and to the spread of debit and credit cards beyond wealthier households. He said the new facilities would strengthen digital infrastructure and cybersecurity, and described the project as a major step towards a more secure financial system.

For ordinary users, nothing changes overnight. The benefit is less visible: a second, hardened site that makes it less likely a single failure can stop payments across the country.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.