India Emerges as Fast-Growing Hub for Global AI Data Centers
By Leon Lien/Ted Chen/Lily LaMattina
India is emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for AI data centers, with fiberoptic and construction industries racing to keep pace. Backed by state funding, tax waivers for hyperscalers and abundant land and power, the country is positioning itself to close the gap between the data it holds and its current data center capacity.
India’s AI Boom
REPORTER:
At a bustling factory in western India, technicians work around the clock to turn glass into hair-thin fiber optic strands, bound for data centers powering AI’s growth worldwide.
India’s AI models and advanced chips may not be on the radar for most, but the country is emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for AI data centers.
Ankit Agarwal (MANAGING DIRECTOR, OPTICAL FIBER AND TELECOM SUPPLIER):
I think we are well-placed, you know, whether it comes to land, power availability and I think the way the push is coming both from the center and the states, I think this is the right time and I think, you know, many, many companies are looking at not only setting up but having five to ten year investment plans in India.
REPORTER:
Construction is heating up to match.
Sharad Agarwal (CHIEF EXECUTIVE, DATA CENTER OPERATOR):
So we have 16 operational data centres. There are 12 under development data centres. We have close to 200 megawatts of operational capacity currently. And under development pipeline and all the future pipeline that we have, we expect to get to the lot bigger number.
REPORTER:
Unlike elsewhere, the rapid expansion has met little resistance so far, and stakeholders largely appear to be on the same page.
Sharad Agarwal (CHIEF EXECUTIVE, DATA CENTER OPERATOR):
See, the Indian opposition to data centers in India is probably in a very nascent stage and some of the voices of opposition that I have heard, they had been primarily driven by the data being from the US rather than the data being used from India. If the experts will use the Indian data and then I am confident that there will not be any opposition.
REPORTER:
India is looking to climb the ladder of world tech superpowers. Semiconductor projects to fuel the AI boom in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, and around 10 billion US dollars of state funding for projects nationwide is no coincidence. New Delhi is also backing the AI buildout with tax waivers for hyperscalers on Indian soil — chasing a gap where India holds a fifth of the world's data but under 5 percent of its data center capacity.
REPORTER:
But this AI automation could rattle India’s enormous IT and business outsourcing industries, worth hundreds of billions of US dollars.
For now, businesses are still riding the boom, and as one chipmaker CEO puts it, the AI game is only in its third inning.
