Economic Survey 2025-26: Large growth opportunity in data centres, says Nasscom

Bengaluru: There is a large growth opportunity as well as a competitiveness gap in data centres. The Economic Survey 2025-26 released on Thursday quoted a Nasscom report which highlights that despite generating nearly 20 per cent of the world’s data, India hosts only about 3 per cent of global data centres, around 150 out of 11,000 worldwide. This indicates a significant opportunity for the country in developing data centres.

At the same time, the Economic Survey also cautions by saying data centres are double-edged swords as they are very energy-intensive. With emerging hubs such as Malaysia (Johor), Japan, and Vietnam intensifying competition, addressing structural constraints such as energy shortages will be critical for India to position itself as a global AI data centre hub.

Driven by surging data consumption, rapid cloud adoption, and the growing use of AI, India’s data centre capacity is projected to reach about 8 GW by 2030 from about 1.4GW as of Q2 of 2025. The survey also stresses on recognising data centres and cloud service providers as a distinct category, rather than classifying them as 'Commercial buildings' under the National Building Code, 2016, which does not account for their specialised design needs.

"Additional measures could include releasing more anonymised public data to leverage scalable cloud-based Digital Public Infrastructure while maintaining robust security standards; facilitating visas for key professionals; providing tax clarity for data hosted by foreign entities in India; enabling energy-intensive data centres to access renewable power; and establishing centres of excellence within corporate hubs to strengthen research partnerships with academia," the survey said.

It also points out that the IT-ITeS sector is well-positioned to play a larger role in the country's medium-term growth and productivity. Recently, Sify CEO-Data Centre and ASSOCHAM National Data Centre Council Co-Chair Sharad Agarwal said the country's data centre infrastructure has to grow to catch up with the demand and fulfil the growth at the same time.

Many companies are now focusing on data centres. With an aim to become the world's largest AI-led technology services firm, Tata Consultancy Services in October last year announced a new business entity to build a 1GW capacity AI data centre in India. Brokerage Jefferies had said that the 1GW plan by TCS could place the IT firm among the country's top-5 data centre operators. And that this could involve a capital expenditure of about $5 billion.