India Data Centres: Demand Tailwinds, First-Mile Bottlenecks and Investor Discipline

India’s data traffic per smartphone has grown from 14 GB/month in 2019 to 36 GB/month today. 5G base stations have scaled nearly nine-fold in three years.

Yet India has only 1 MW of data centre capacity per million people — compared to China’s 4 MW and the US’s 51 MW.

Co-location capacity is expected to triple to 3 GW by 2030. Mumbai and Chennai account for nearly two-thirds of installed capacity due to undersea cable connectivity and reliable power.

Hyperscalers drive demand but increasingly prefer self-built facilities, raising execution standards for co-location operators.

The real constraint is first-mile infrastructure — grid connectivity, substation constraints, and tariff complexity.

Disciplined investors who underwrite execution risk — not just demand growth — will capture genuine upside.