New Launch - India Real Estate Report 2026.
India's data centre story has crossed a threshold. It is no longer just about computing infrastructure. It is increasingly a real estate story.
The country's data centre footprint is expected to exceed 101 million sq ft by 2030, up sharply from nearly 27 million sq ft in H1 2026 and just 0.6 million sq ft in 2007.
More than $300 billion in investment commitments are expected to support the expansion, according to an Anarock Capital report.
Why Data Centres Are Now Competing for Prime Land
For developers, data centres are now competing directly with homes, offices, malls and hotels for the same sites. The calculation is not straightforward.
Binitha Dalal, Founder and Managing Director of Mt K Kapital, said India does not yet have dedicated data centre land the way it has established categories for other real estate assets.
"There are no dedicated data centre lands, in India it is still an upcoming asset class," Dalal told NDTV. A developer has to weigh the returns from a data centre against what the same land could generate as residential or commercial.
Data centres need very specific infrastructure reliable power, steady water supply, strong connectivity and skilled maintenance teams. They cannot be pushed to the far outskirts of a city simply because land is cheaper.
Dalal was candid about the margin question. "As a pure play, data centres are not something where developers will make the margins they would normally make in any other asset class," she said.
But the picture changes in markets where hyperscaler-grade data centre use is already approved. In those locations, land suited for data centres can command a premium over agricultural, residential or commercial alternatives.
Also Read: Anant Raj to Demerge Data Centre Business as Ashok Cloud
AI Is the Force Behind the Demand Surge
The biggest driver of the next phase is not traditional cloud computing. It is AI. Anarock expects rapid AI adoption to become a major force behind data centre demand.
But Gurleen Khurana, Co-Founder of SimplifyGenAI, said the part of the AI story that gets missed is inference not training.
Training builds AI models. Inference is what happens every time a model responds to a user, generates an image or makes a decision. That could mean millions of small workloads running continuously, around the clock.
"Enterprise AI is moving from pilots to production, and production workloads never switch off," Khurana told NDTV. Inference needs capacity closer to users. Latency matters. Energy efficiency matters.
The next phase of India's data centre expansion is not simply about adding square footage it is about building the right capacity in the right places.
Also Read: Amazon Leases 4 Acres in Powai from L&T for ₹650 Crore
Mumbai Leads, But the Map Is Spreading
Mumbai-MMR remains India's largest data centre market, anchored by its financial ecosystem and enterprise demand. But the sector is expanding across the country:
- Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad are emerging as significant clusters
- Installed capacity has already crossed 1.8 GW in H1 2026
- The pipeline could take total capacity beyond 6.7 GW by the end of the decade
The expansion will create demand well beyond real estate itself power infrastructure, renewable energy, engineering and construction services, fibre connectivity and advanced cooling systems.
India's land market is already changing as a result. The value of a plot is no longer determined only by what can be built on it.
It is increasingly linked to whether that land can support the infrastructure a digital economy needs to function.
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