The Reserve Bank's Rs 169 Crore Data Centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute Opened Near Bhubaneswar on 25 October 2026, With Four Data Centres on an 18.55-Acre Campus

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) opened a new data centre and a Cybersecurity Training Institute at Info Valley-II in Jatni, Khordha district, near Bhubaneswar on 25 October 2026. The Prime Minister inaugurated both, according to the RBI’s press release of that day. PTI and Deccan Chronicle put the cost of the data centre at Rs 169 crore (about 1.69 billion rupees), on 18.55 acres of land.

The foundation stone was laid on 22 March 2023 by the then Governor, Shaktikanta Das, so the campus took just over three and a half years from stone to ribbon. The RBI’s 2023 release called it a “Greenfield Data Centre”, meaning it was built on empty land rather than inside an existing building.

What opened in Jatni

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) described the facilities in a statement of 24 October. They were “designed to meet the Bank’s computing requirements” and to give the Bank and the wider financial sector computing that is secure, resilient, scalable and future-ready, the statement says. Four data centres will host the Bank’s mission-critical payment and settlement systems along with other flagship initiatives.

The RBI’s release of 25 October names two of those systems: RTGS and NEFT, the real-time gross settlement and National Electronic Funds Transfer systems the RBI runs for bank-to-bank payments. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Governor Sanjay Malhotra, Odisha Governor Brajmohan Ram, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi and two Deputy Chief Ministers were among those present, according to PTI.

Four data centres, a certificate and a choice of site

The PMO statement says the facility “has been certified to Uptime Institute Tier IV standard”, which it calls the highest tier of operational resilience. The PMO adds that the site is among the largest Tier IV certified facilities in banking, financial services and insurance worldwide. That ranking is the government’s own claim, and the statement does not say who compiled the comparison.

The Free Press Journal reports that the RBI describes the centre as Tier IV certified for its design, which is a narrower statement than certification of a finished building. The same article attributes to the RBI the statement that the centre is built for high redundancy, system availability and in-built fault tolerance.

On the choice of Odisha, an official quoted by PTI said the site was chosen for geographical stability: it lies away from seismically active zones and from high-risk international border areas. The Free Press Journal says analysts offered further reasons, such as distance from the western and northern borders, but notes that the RBI did not respond to its request for comment, so those are the analysts’ views and not the Bank’s.

One of two RBI data centres

Chief Minister Majhi described the new centre as the second of its kind after the one in Navi Mumbai, PTI reported. The Free Press Journal names the primary site as Kharghar, Navi Mumbai. Deccan Chronicle also calls Jatni the RBI’s second data centre.

Some reports, including The Week’s on 22 October, call Jatni a secondary backup to Navi Mumbai. The RBI’s and the PMO’s own texts, as read for this article, do not use that term, and this article calls it the second facility.

The institute on the same campus

The Cybersecurity Training Institute is the other half of the project. The PMO says it will give the sector a dedicated institutional platform for cybersecurity and enterprise-technology training, research and capability development. Its focus will be technologies relevant to banking, financial services and insurance, including quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

The 2023 release described the aim more broadly: to add to the Bank’s existing computing infrastructure and to support research and capacity building where central banking, technology and cybersecurity meet. It said the campus would serve “the emerging requirements” of the Reserve Bank and the financial sector. In 2023 it was announced as the Enterprise Computing & Cybersecurity Training Institute.

The payments the building is meant to carry

The RBI’s release says the data centre will host systems such as RTGS and NEFT, and the Governor’s welcome address pledged more use of emerging technologies and stronger digital infrastructure, as well as self-reliant technological capabilities. Sitharaman said resilient infrastructure supports financial stability and sustained growth, the release says.

Deccan Chronicle reports Sitharaman as saying UPI, the Unified Payments Interface, handles more than 2,400 crore transactions a month. NPCI figures reported by Outlook Money for September 2026 are in line: 24.07 billion transactions worth Rs 29.37 lakh crore, a daily average of about 802 million. Neither the RBI nor the PMO says the new centre will host UPI itself; its stated load is the Bank’s own payment and settlement systems. How UPI grew to this size is covered in India built the world’s busiest payment rail and in the September 2026 UPI numbers.

What the Prime Minister and the Governor said

In the PMO’s account of his address, the Prime Minister said the past decade was about taking banking to people who had been left out, and the coming decade is about making banking more efficient and more reliable. He cited nearly 60 crore accounts opened under the Jan Dhan scheme; the Jan Dhan account figures are set out elsewhere on tuput.

On cyber threats he said “wars are not fought with weapons alone” and that a growing economy must protect its banking system, and he said the new institute had a role in replacing outdated training and tools with modern ones. The PMO also records him saying that Odisha, adding semiconductors, electronics, data centres and advanced computing to its mineral industries, would go “from mines to microchips”.

Governor Malhotra thanked the Prime Minister and linked the RBI’s technology work to the goal of a developed India by 2047, according to the RBI release. For how the Bank’s decisions fit with the government’s, see who sets interest rates and the rupee. For the state itself, the Odisha overview has the background.

Figures that differ between reports

The cost is Rs 169 crore in PTI’s reports, which Deccan Chronicle also uses, and about Rs 170 crore in All India Radio’s report and in The Week. The RBI’s own release of 25 October gives no cost, no floor area and no technical specification.

The release and the PMO statement also use the future tense: the data centres “will host” the payment systems. As of 29 October 2026, none of the documents read for this article gives a date for when RTGS, NEFT or other systems begin running from Jatni.