India is well positioned to emerge as a major data center hub in the Southeast Asia region. Cross-border connectivity is expanding, with 8 new subsea cable landing stations planned (5 in Mumbai and 3 in Chennai), in addition to existing 17, bringing the country closer to established hubs such as Singapore (26 cable landing stations).
The country also offers cost advantages, with data center capex of $6.5mn/MW, lower than China, alongside competitive power tariffs, government policy push and a large technical talent pool, according to PL Capital.
In addition, India’s power capacity is expanding rapidly, with installed capacity expected to grow to 700GW by 2030, including a significant increase in renewable energy capacity to support sustainable data centre operations.
Historical trends also indicate rising hyperscaler participation in India’s data center ecosystem, with the number of hyperscalers increasing from 5 to 15 between 2019 and 2024 and their share of colocation capacity rising from 35% to 54%, highlighting a structural shift toward large-scale cloud demand and reinforcing India’s positioning as a high-growth data center market.
India accounts for nearly 20% of global data consumption but hosts less than 5% of the world’s data centers, underscoring a headroom for expansion.
