India may need to deploy between $350 billion and $435 billion in cumulative investment by 2030 to build out the AI data centre infrastructure required to support its rapidly expanding digital economy, according to a report released on Wednesday, 29 July 2025 by OmniScience Capital. The country's operational data centre capacity would need to scale from roughly 1.6 GW today to 19–23 GW by the end of the decade — a near-fifteenfold expansion.

Scale of the Opportunity

The OmniScience Capital report positions India as one of the world's largest generators of digital data, accounting for an estimated 15–20 per cent of global data generation. Widespread AI adoption across sectors is expected to accelerate demand for compute and storage infrastructure at an unprecedented pace.

Notably, approximately $160 billion in investments have already been announced or are currently under implementation, signalling strong early momentum behind India's emergence as a global AI infrastructure hub.

Beyond the Data Centre: The Non-Compute Ecosystem

The report argues that the investment opportunity extends well beyond data centre developers themselves. Every additional megawatt of AI infrastructure requires a vast non-compute ecosystem — spanning electricity generation, transmission, transformers, switchgear, industrial cables, backup power, cooling systems, HVAC, networking, security, and building automation.

Collectively, this ecosystem cuts across 11–12 infrastructure sub-sectors, offering a broad and diversified set of entry points for investors and industry participants. The report identifies over 230 listed companies across India's power value chain alone, with additional opportunities in cooling, networking, security, and facility infrastructure.

Power Demand: A Critical Constraint

Operating 19–23 GW of data centre capacity would require approximately 150–170 TWh of electricity annually by 2030 — equivalent to roughly 6 per cent of India's projected electricity demand that year. By 2035, that share could rise to 8 per cent, placing significant pressure on the country's generation and transmission infrastructure.

This comes amid India's broader push to expand renewable energy capacity, raising questions about whether green power can keep pace with AI-driven electricity demand at this scale.

What Industry Leaders Are Saying

Ashwini Shami, President and Chief Portfolio Manager at OmniScience Capital, said: 'As one of the world's fastest-growing digital economies, India holds immense potential in AI data centres. While domestic frontier AI model developers and semiconductor players are still emerging, the most direct path to participating in the AI revolution today is through non-compute infrastructure.'

Shami added that as India's AI infrastructure scales, companies across utilities, transmission, and electrical equipment will likely emerge as key beneficiaries of this long-term structural trend.

What Comes Next

With capital already rotating into power and electrical equipment plays, analysts expect investor focus to shift progressively from data centre developers to the broader infrastructure supply chain. The diversified nature of the ecosystem means that even if AI adoption timelines shift, multiple sub-sectors stand to benefit across different phases of the buildout. How India manages the electricity intensity of this expansion will be a defining policy challenge through the rest of the decade.