India's data centre capacity could surge to between 4 GW and 8 GW by 2030, with as many as 90 cities identified as suitable locations for future data centre development, according to a new report launched in New Delhi on 9 May 2025. The findings underscore the growing strategic importance of digital infrastructure as India scales its technology and economic ambitions.

Key Findings of the Report

The report outlines detailed pathways for infrastructure-grade planning, covering grid-integrated power provisioning, water-efficient cooling systems, and coordinated policy interventions across Centre and state governments. It calls for a systems-level approach to digital infrastructure planning, aligning data centre expansion with sustainability goals and long-term resilience. Notably, the identification of 90 cities as viable data centre hubs signals a shift beyond the traditional metro-centric model that has dominated the sector.

What the Government Said

Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada, who launched the report, said India's data centre ecosystem is evolving into strategic national infrastructure critical to the country's technological and economic ambitions. He highlighted that the rise of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, digital public infrastructure, and emerging technologies such as 6G would significantly increase the importance of data centres in determining where digital value is created and processed.

Industry and Parliamentary Voices

NFPRC Foundation Chairperson Tarun Chugh said data centres are becoming a critical pillar of national infrastructure and instruments of strategic autonomy. He stressed that India's digital transformation — driven by initiatives such as DigiLocker and digital public infrastructure — requires robust backend infrastructure to support growing digital demand, and called for coordinated efforts between the Centre and states to create competitive ecosystems for investment.

Rajya Sabha MP and member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, Sujeet Kumar, said India is rapidly transitioning into a multi-gigawatt data centre economy, fuelled by rising demand from AI workloads, cloud services, financial services, and digital public infrastructure. He pointed out that data centres are crucial to India's digital economy, with nearly 70 million UPI transactions processed daily and billions of digital transactions annually.

Why This Matters

This comes amid intensifying global competition for data sovereignty and digital infrastructure dominance. India's push to expand data centre capacity aligns with its broader ambition to become a global technology hub, while also addressing the energy and water resource demands that large-scale data centre operations entail. The launch event brought together policymakers, industry leaders, technology experts, and researchers to deliberate on the future of India's digital infrastructure ecosystem.

With sectoral guidelines and policy frameworks expected to take shape in the coming months, the trajectory of India's data centre growth will depend heavily on how effectively Centre-state coordination and private investment are mobilised.