The report titled ‘Racks to Riches: India Data Centres’ stated that India currently has 1.4 GW of operational data centre (DC) capacity, with 1.4 GW under-construction and another about 5 GW in the planning stage.
This would be bolstered by data localisation laws, enabling regulatory environment and subsidies from governments, and rising cloud adoption, among other ‘tailwinds’.
Spotlighting the “giga-scale digital dreams”, it said India’s DC capacity will double by ’27 based on under-construction capacity, and it may increase 5x by ’30 if pipeline capacity is fast-tracked.
“Cumulative capex excluding servers could be USD 30-45 billion based on USD 4mn/MW (Sify prospectus) to USD 7m/MW (recent announcements). Key thematic tailwinds include data localisation laws, supportive regulatory environment and subsidies from central and state governments, rising enterprise cloud adoption, surge in mobile data demand and OTT content, and growth of digital-native businesses,” it said.
In its biggest ever investment in India, tech giant Google this month said it will invest USD 15 billion in building an AI infrastructure hub in Andhra Pradesh, which would include a gigawatt-scale data centre in partnership with Adani Group. The project is expected to create 5,000-6,000 direct jobs and 20,000-30,000 total jobs in Andhra Pradesh. The AI hub at Visakhapatnam will be Google’s largest outside the US and will include a data centre fuelled by clean energy and a fibre-optic network.
Business tycoon Gautam Adani had said his company, AdaniConneX, would partner with Google on the project, along with Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest mobile operator.
The USD 15 billion will be invested over the next five years (that is 2026-2030).
“GW scale announcements just this month include Google AI Vizag hub (USD 15 billion commitment, local partner Bharti, AdaniConneX) and TCS (US USD 6.5 billion). Earlier, Jio announced its ambition for a fully integrated green AI DC in Jamnagar with both Meta and Google as partners, and AWS committed USD 13 billion to augment its India cloud capacity by 2030,” the Macquarie report said.