Nikhil Inamdar
The extraordinary rise of artificial intelligence has turbocharged data centre growth in India, Asia's third largest economy.
Data centres - the centralised physical facilities that enable our growing digital existence by hosting computer servers, IT infrastructure and network equipment - power everything from ChatGPT queries to electric vehicles and streaming services.
Last month, Google made an eye-popping $15bn (£11.49bn) investment in an AI data centre in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh - its biggest in India.
It was the latest among a string of investments from companies - including global giants like Amazon Web Services and Meta and local players such as Reliance Industries - that are pumping billions of dollars into India's data centre market. Even luxury real-estate developers have joined the bandwagon to build these computing facilities.
The sector is poised for "explosive growth", according to global real estate advisory JLL, with India's data centre capacity projected to surge 77% by 2027 to reach 1.8GW. Some $25-30bn is expected to be spent in capacity expansion by 2030, according to various estimates.
While vital for India's developmental needs, the growth of such energy hungry, water-guzzling infrastructure has profound implications for the country's decarbonisation plans.
India has 18% of the world's population, but only 4% of its water resources
India has no option but to attract big data centre investments, some experts say.
While the country is said to account for 20% of global data generation, it has only 3% of global data centre capacity. And demand for such infrastructure is soaring, with India expected to consume the most data in the world by 2028 - higher than developed markets like the US, Europe and even China.
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