According to Crisil, data center capacity in India will increase fivefold by 2030

According to the rating agency Crisil, India's data center industry is entering an investment boom. It is projected that installed capacity will increase fivefold, reaching 7.5 gigawatts (GW) by the fiscal year 2030, which will attract over 3 lakh crore rupees over four financial years leading up to March 2030.

This sharp growth is driven by the demand for computing fueled by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), enterprise digitalization, and increased data consumption. Crisil emphasized that the pace of this expansion and the credit rating of data center developers will depend on timely grid connectivity, regulatory approvals, and disciplined project execution.

The visibility of demand for the capital-intensive industry is assessed as high. Nearly half of the future capacity is already secured through long-term contracts, which limits speculative development and reduces sales risk. Preliminary agreements with hyperscalers, stimulated by the adoption of cloud technologies and compute-intensive GenAI workloads, ensure revenue certainty from the outset, helping to mitigate project risks.

The agency noted that India's structural advantages further enhance its attractiveness as a data center destination. Development costs are approximately one-fifth lower than in several competing markets across the Asia-Pacific region, thanks to more competitive prices for land, construction, and labor. Combined with lower electricity tariffs, this results in rental rates that are 30–35 percent lower than in comparable markets.

Furthermore, the ability to build large campuses using renewable energy aligns with hyperscalers' sustainability goals, strengthening India's competitive position. However, this unprecedented growth in development also creates bottlenecks in power supply infrastructure.

About three-quarters of the expected future capacity, amounting to around 6 GW, is planned to be built in Visakhapatnam, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. By fiscal year 2030, the data center capacity in these cities could sharply increase to approximately 80%, 60%, and 20% of their current peak electricity demand, respectively. This underscores the critical importance of timely capacity expansion and grid connection.

In light of these circumstances, disciplined growth backed by solid contracts serves as an important safeguard for developers. Existing facilities in India operate at about 90% utilization, and over 95% of the capacity currently under construction already has contracts. This should facilitate faster cash flow growth after projects become operational.

Participants at the 17th edition of the TechSparks conference by YourStory stated that India's app-centric economy still lacks a thriving market for digital goods, and solving this issue is a matter of both technology and sovereignty.

Priya Narasimhan, Director of Business Development at Indus Appstore, noted that despite the country's mobile-oriented habits, a large digital goods market has not formed. She attributed this to distribution monopolies controlled by Google and Apple, as well as the economic model of these companies' commissions, which range from 15% to 30%, making low-priced digital products unprofitable. Furthermore, web stores face issues with low reach and user friction.

Narasimhan argued that digital sovereignty is defined by how and where consumers interact with technology. She highlighted three areas India must control: discovery and distribution through app marketplaces, monetization and billing, and the system of trust and data consent. She cited the dispute between Epic Games and Google in the US as an illustration of the consequences of developers' dependence on intermediaries, emphasizing that the goal of sovereignty is to integrate into global technologies on India's terms, rather than rebuilding every basic layer.

Sagar Gaonkar, CTO of Eloelo Group, stated that India's strengths lie in its data, cultural diversity, and talent for creating platforms and creativity. He added that chips and large language models can be developed based on these resources, bringing value to India, which can then be exported. He also warned that security cannot be a secondary concern, as more and more tools are hosted outside the country.

Discussing artificial intelligence, Gaonkar noted that it helps micro-drama platforms make content production decisions and personalize viewing for viewers, as well as create stories adapted to user preferences. Narasimhan suggested that app stores become hybrid platforms: simple and familiar to most Indians on the surface, but managed by AI agents on the backend, allowing developers to scale regardless of whether users click an icon or interact with a chatbot.

Both speakers refuted the notion that the population of Bharat is a low-spending audience. Narasimhan recalled that the PhonePe gold category only began to grow after allowing purchases of ₹10 per day. Gaonkar countered that Indian users value value, not that they refuse to pay, and they require a gentler way to sample a product before purchasing. Narasimhan also urged founders to communicate more with users instead of relying solely on analytics.

In response to audience questions, Narasimhan reported that Indus aims to reduce commission burdens on developers and dismissed the idea that Indians do not value digital goods, citing micro-dramas, OTT, and games. She stressed that platforms should not make content discovery exclusively a paid service. Regarding fraudulent installations, she explained that verification includes automated checks, human analysis, and continuous monitoring, while acknowledging that no system is absolutely foolproof.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) state-of-the-art Greenfield Data Center and Cyber Security Training Institute in Jatni, Odisha. This center is located in the InfoValley-II area near Bhubaneswar, with the primary objective of strengthening the country's banking system and enhancing digital data security.

The estimated cost for this project is around ₹169 to ₹170 crore, and the entire complex spans 18.55 acres of land. A total of four modern data centers have been built in this complex, which will be used to support essential digital systems and payment settlement functions of the RBI.

There is a rapid increase in the use of online banking and digital payments currently, which necessitates a robust technological infrastructure. The data center stores and processes data through large servers and networking systems. This new center by the RBI will support critical digital systems and also enhance the capability to keep services running continuously and restore systems during any technical failure or other issue.

This data center has received Tier IV certification from the Uptime Institute, which is considered the highest category for data centers. This implies that extremely robust arrangements are in place for backup and handling failures in power, cooling, and other essential systems. However, this certification does not guarantee that the center can never be subjected to a cyber attack; it primarily relates to the robustness of the data center's infrastructure and its capacity for continuous operation.

Along with the data center, an Enterprise Computing and Cyber Security Training Institute has also been established here. This institute will promote training and research related to subjects such as cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Quantum Computing, and other innovative technologies. While RBI already operates a major data center in Navi Mumbai, this new facility launched in Odisha can significantly contribute to strengthening the country's digital financial infrastructure. This is expected to improve the availability of essential digital systems and preparedness against cyber threats.