Author : Written by Surendra Jauhari
The 8 GW Future: How India is Rewriting the Data Center Playbook
There is a huge demand for Data Center due to growing requirements from the people for online services and demand for e-government projects.
The first Data Center has been established in Hyderabad in 2008, followed by NDL Pune in 2010, in Delhi 2011 & in Bhubaneshwar in 2018.
NDC Bhubaneshwar was established with a set-of-the-art facilitates with 24*7 support, covering 40,000 square feet area, offering services to Government Dept. since its inception.
The unprecedented demand creation for the Data Center due to the largest mobile user in the world, rapidly growing demand for AI, huge demand and shift from traditional large workforce to new model, 5G roll out and government focused on data sovereignty.
The main priority of Data Center is to shift from enterprise to high-level strategic large Data Centers of the country.
Data Center market is expected to reach 1 GW as of now to 2 GW by 2026 as per the industry analyst, also industry experts believe that the Data Centers capacity is expected to grow fivefold up to 8 GW by 2030, which have expected capital expenditure over $30B.
Think of scaling Data Center, this is not as simple growth story as we think.
But in India, growth is just not due to demand, it is more driven and constrained by deeper structured factors.
There are main two drivers Government push for data sovereignty & digital infrastructure and sustainability & resource which is constraint by ecofriendly system, skilled work-force and the high capital expenditure.
Data sovereignty means data generated in India must be stored & processed in India like: sensitive data must be within national borders, control over digital infrastructure & reduced dependency on foreign jurisdictions.
This creates a non-negotiable policy push to build large domestic Data Center capacity.
While building this locally would be expensive and resource intensive, enterprise still need to do it because of regulations.
Second, Data Centers consume massive amount of electricity, water (for cooling), land, and grid infrastructure.
But biggest constraint is power & sustainability, the most critical challenge.
There are three major problems Availability, Cost, and Cleanliness.
Data Centers require up to 99.99% of electricity all the time but still reliability of the power grid is a major concern, ensuring and getting adequate power supply 24*7 remains a challenge although Indian achieving near-universal household electrification, still faces risks of power cuts during nighttime hours as solar generation drops and it force to reliance on coal to stabilize the grid, which again increase the cost and higher operating cost. Which would not be sustainable. Last and most important Cleanliness, which again is not environment friendly, creates high carbon foot print, regular pressure on sustainability due to rely on diesel generator for power backup.
The Green Imperative:
Large global cloud companies/hyper scalers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft & Google have committed to running on 100% renewable energy.
So, hyper scalers may not partner with the third-party Data Centers, if providers are not able to prove clean energy usage and low emissions. These hyper scalers closely audit:
This creates opportunity for Data Centers to meet these green demands, that industry needs.
In short, If I say;
Sustainability is not longer option-it is a business requirements and competitive advantage.
The Hidden Bottlenecks are:
India is known as world class IT talent-but not have enough specialized Data Centers operators.
Skills required:
Now, in real time, if you see shortages in both white & blue caller exists.
There would be one solution and that is facilitates more training programs.
The Regulatory Maze:
Data Centers requires multiple regulatory clearances and from different dept. Data Centers is not like building normal offices and commercial building.
Before building Data Centers it requires multiple approvals like land, environment (water, power & land), authorities review about environment impact water usage plan, emissions norms & water disposal system, any delay can significantly slow the project.
States that simplify approvals become more attractive for large data centre investments — because time certainty equals capital efficiency.
The Big Picture:
India’s Data Centers boom is driven by regulation (data localization), capital (global infrastructure investments), technology (AI explosion), geography & sustainability presence.
The opportunity is enormous but depends on power reform, green energy adaption, skilled workforce development & smarter policy execution.
Finally,
India is not just building Data Centers. It is building the backbone of its digital sovereignty.
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