Investment commitment to Indian data centres stood at $6.5 billion between 2014 and 2024, a report published by consultancy firm Anarock said, adding that the majority of the growth was witnessed in the last five years.
The investment in this segment, which mirrors growth in internet penetration aided by expansion of telecom bandwidth at an affordable rate, included private equity participation, joint ventures and acquisitions. The capacity of the Indian data centres stood at 1.4 gigawatt, up from 590 mega watt in 2019, representing a 139 per cent increase.
The industry is now estimated to be $10 billion and generating revenue of $1.2 billion in 2024. Mumbai and Chennai account for 70 per cent of India’s total IT power capacity with Mumbai alone contributing 49 per cent.
Commenting on the growth of the sector, Devi Shankar, executive director - industrial, logistics & data centres, Anarock Capital, said, “This surge is underpinned by rising internet penetration, which has risen from 33.4 per cent in 2019 to 55.2 per cent in 2024, a near-doubling in data consumption per user from 11.5 GB to 21.1 GB/month, and an explosion in average traffic per smartphone, which grew from 13 GB to 32 GB.
Anarock estimated that India now leads globally in average mobile data traffic per smartphone.
The report also pointed out that edge data centres — small-scale, decentralised data storage and processing facilities located nearer to end-users and devices in tier 2 and tier 3 markets — are emerging.
“These include, among others, cities such as Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Vizag, Lucknow, Patna and Bhubaneswar. Edge data centres will play a vital role in supporting latency-sensitive applications and Gen AI-based services,” the report noted.
Even though the report does not mention Calcutta, the city is also seeing development of multiple data centres, notably from Reliance, Bharti and NTT.