Shobhit Agarwal, CEO of Anarock Capital, explores how AI, cloud adoption and rising data consumption could expand India’s data centre footprint to more than 101 million sq ft by 2030, backed by over USD 300 billion in investment commitments.
India’s digital economy is creating a new kind of real estate requirement. It is not conventional office space, warehousing or manufacturing. It is the physical infrastructure needed to store, process and move the enormous volumes of data being generated by a country with more than 950 million internet users.
Data centres have consequently moved well beyond their earlier identity as a niche technology segment. They are emerging as a specialised asset class at the intersection of real estate, technology, energy and infrastructure, and the scale of development expected over the next few years illustrates just how significant that transition could become.
According to Anarock Capital’s latest report, Data Centre: The Blueprint of The Digital Fortress in India, India’s data centre footprint is projected to exceed 101 million sq ft by 2030. To put that growth into perspective, the country had approximately 0.6 million sq ft of data centre space in 2007. By the first half of 2026, the footprint had expanded to nearly 27 million sq ft across 164 data centres.
The projected 101 million sq ft footprint highlights the sheer physical scale of the opportunity. Data centres are highly infrastructure-intensive assets, requiring suitable land, substantial power capacity, sophisticated cooling systems, resilient connectivity and specialised engineering.
That means every new facility creates demand beyond the data centre building itself. As operators expand, requirements for strategically located land, renewable energy, power infrastructure, fibre networks, engineering and construction expertise, and advanced cooling solutions are likely to grow alongside them.
Capacity Could More Than Triple
The expansion is equally visible when measured by computing capacity.
India’s operational data centre capacity has crossed 1.8 GW as of H1 2026, according to the report. The development pipeline could take this beyond 6.7 GW by 2030, representing more than a threefold increase over the next four years.
Supporting that pipeline are more than USD 300 billion in investment commitments, which Anarock Capital says place India among the world’s fastest-growing data centre markets.
This investment interest reflects several structural forces coming together at once. Cloud adoption continues to expand, businesses are accelerating digitalisation, digital payments have become embedded in everyday commerce, data consumption continues to rise and demand for secure digital infrastructure is growing.
But perhaps the biggest change ahead is artificial intelligence.
AI Is Changing What a Data Centre Needs to Be
By 2030, AI workloads are expected to account for around 70% of data centre demand, according to the report.
That matters because AI does not simply create demand for more data centres. It changes what those facilities need to deliver.
AI models require considerably greater computing power, storage capacity and energy than many conventional digital applications. As AI adoption expands across businesses, governments and consumer services, data centres are evolving from facilities that support digital activity into infrastructure that can influence technological capacity and economic competitiveness.
This also has implications for real estate. Facilities designed for increasingly intensive computing workloads require access to substantial and reliable power, advanced cooling infrastructure and strong fibre connectivity. As a result, the suitability of a data centre location depends on considerably more than the availability of land.
India’s growth is also taking place within a rapidly expanding global market. Global data centre capacity exceeded 92 GW in H1 2026 and is projected by the report to surpass 210 GW by the end of 2030, supported by approximately USD 3 trillion in investment commitments.
Mumbai Leads, But India’s Data Centre Map Is Expanding
India’s data centre market remains concentrated around its largest commercial and digital hubs, with Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) maintaining a particularly strong position.
MMR currently has 54 operational data centres with 812 MW of IT capacity, giving it approximately half of India’s market. Its position reflects a combination of enterprise demand, financial-sector activity and connectivity infrastructure.
Chennai follows with 25 operational data centres and 298 MW of IT capacity. Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru each have 18 operational facilities, with respective capacities of 179 MW and 137 MW, while Hyderabad has 12 data centres representing 178 MW.
The emergence of multiple clusters is important for India’s next phase of development. Data centre operators require the right combination of land, power, network connectivity, renewable-energy access and proximity to demand. As more cities develop those capabilities, opportunities for data-centre-linked real estate and infrastructure investment can extend beyond the established hubs.
The Infrastructure Behind the Digital Economy
Policy and financing conditions are also influencing the sector’s evolution.
India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 has reinforced the importance of secure data management infrastructure. Data centres have also received infrastructure status, improving their ability to access longer-tenure financing.
According to the Anarock Capital report, financing can extend to tenures of up to 12 years, with interest rates of approximately 9.5% to 10.5%. The proposed tax holiday through 2047 for eligible global cloud service providers could further influence India’s competitiveness as companies consider where to locate future digital infrastructure.
Yet the scale of the opportunity means the next phase cannot be viewed purely in terms of adding more buildings.
Power, land and connectivity will ultimately shape where and how India’s next generation of data centres is developed. Reliable energy supplies, access to renewable power, high-speed connectivity and suitable development sites will need to expand alongside computing capacity.
This is what makes the data centre story particularly important for the wider real estate industry. Growth towards a potential 101 million sq ft footprint would influence land requirements, infrastructure investment, construction activity and the development patterns of India’s major digital markets.
Data centres are increasingly being described as the factories of the AI age. If India’s digital economy continues expanding at its current pace, the physical infrastructure behind that economy will need to grow with it.
The opportunity, therefore, extends far beyond servers and computing capacity. India’s next data centre growth phase could help reshape the relationship between technology, infrastructure and commercial real estate; turning the places where data is processed into an increasingly important part of the country’s built environment.
