India data centre footprint may quadruple to 101 msf by 2030: Anarock

Over $300 billion in investment commitments to drive capacity expansion, with developers eyeing expansion in Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad mkts

India’s data centre (DC) footprint is set to rise fourfold to 101 million square feet (msf) by 2030 from the current 27 msf in the first half (H1) of 2026, driven by high cloud adoption, hyperscaler capital commitments and government localisation norms.

 

According to a report by data consultancy firm Anarock, upcoming DC supply will be largely driven by investment commitments worth more than $300 billion, with projects expected to materialise by the end of this decade.

 

The big-ticket investment announcements include a $15 billion commitment by Google for a DC in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam, along with a nearly $1.7 billion investment by the Colt DC-RMZ joint venture in Mumbai and Chennai.

   

Similarly, Reliance has announced a 168-megawatt (MW) AI-enabled DC in Jamnagar, which will be leased and used by Meta as its first built-to-suit centre in India.

 

The development pipeline is expected to boost India’s DC capacity to over 6.7 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 from over 1.8 GW as of H1 2026, a near-threefold increase in the next four years.

 

“The massive scale of investment commitments demonstrates the long-term confidence surrounding the sector, and its strategic importance to the digital economy,” said Shobhit Agarwal, chief executive officer, Anarock Capital.

 

He added that the trend also reflects the convergence of multiple structural demand drivers such as cloud adoption, rising data consumption, AI, digital payments, enterprise digitalisation and the growing need for secure and resilient digital infrastructure.

 

Policy interventions such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA), 2023, further emphasise the importance of secure domestic data infrastructure and support the broader requirement for robust and compliant data management capabilities.

 

The DPDPA, 2023, creates legal obligations for personal data to be stored and processed within Indian borders across many categories.

 

“This single regulation forces every multinational operating in India to establish onshore data infrastructure, making colocation demand partially non-discretionary,” the report stated.

 

Similarly, infrastructure status accorded to data centres has also helped improve access to long-tenure financing at interest rates of around 9.5-10.5 per cent, for tenures extending up to 12 years.

 

A proposed tax holiday through 2047 for eligible global cloud service providers is further expected to enhance India’s competitiveness.

Realty players eye greenfield DC growth in new cities

Market observers added that India’s DC sector growth will also be fuelled by geographic diversification, as real estate players enter the segment and look beyond the traditional markets of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Chennai.

 

Currently, MMR and Chennai are the largest Indian DC markets by both quantity and capacity, as they are located at the intersection of subsea cable routes connecting Europe, West Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia.

 

However, real estate players entering the DC market are now increasingly looking at Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru as newer entry points.

 

Hyderabad is expected to be the biggest beneficiary, with 600-700 MW of planned DC supply to be added by 2030, up from the current 178 MW capacity.

 

Major announcements include nearly 400 MW of DC capacity by NTT Global DC, part of Tokyo-headquartered IT and business giant NTT Data, and a multi-hundred-MW hyperscale DC park by Tillman Global Holdings, according to the Anarock report.

 

Similarly, almost 500-600 MW of DC load capacity is expected to be added in Delhi-NCR by 2030. The region currently has a DC load capacity of 179 MW.

 

Among the bigger players, Yotta Infrastructure is working on a 90-MW DC in Greater Noida, while Delhi-based developer Anant Raj is aiming to expand total IT-load capacity to 357 MW by FY32 across Haryana’s Manesar, Panchkula and Rai.

 

Bengaluru-based Prestige Group has a strategic collaboration with NTT Data to develop a data centre facility with a total capacity of 100 MW, including 67.2 MW of critical IT load in Bengaluru.

 

Earlier this year, Mumbai-based Lodha Group said it would enter the data centre market, with 400 acres of shovel-ready land in Palava, Dombivli, for which it has secured two anchor operators — Amazon Web Services (AWS) and STT Global Data Centres, backed by Temasek.

 

The group is now planning to develop about 1 GW of powered shell capacity on this land and has signed memorandums of understanding worth ₹1.3 trillion with the Maharashtra government.