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India's large data centres run 90% full; Crisil sees a fivefold build to 7.5 GW
Crisil Ratings' 3 November outlook for India's colocation data centres: utilisation, contracts, tenors, hyperscaler share and city power demand, to March 2030.
India’s existing large colocation data centres are running at about 90% utilisation, and more than 95% of the capacity now under construction is already contracted, Crisil Ratings said on 3 November.1 It expects installed capacity to rise five-fold to about 7.5 GW by March 2030, on more than ₹3 lakh crore of investment over four financial years, with hyperscalers leasing 75–80% of it by then.1
~90%
utilisation of existing large colocation facilities
Crisil Ratings, 3 Nov
>95%
of capacity under construction already contracted
Crisil Ratings, 3 Nov
15–20 yrs
contract tenors now, from 10–12 years earlier
Crisil Ratings, 3 Nov
75–80%
hyperscalers’ share of capacity by FY2030, from 60–65% in FY2026
Crisil Ratings, 3 Nov
01What Crisil measured, and what it did not
Crisil’s “industry” is third-party colocation: operators that build halls and lease them, not a bank’s own server room. The 90% covers colocation facilities “with capacities exceeding 0.1 GW”. Of about 6 GW of upcoming capacity, under construction or planned for commissioning by FY2030, “nearly half” is committed under long-term contracts.1
Crisil does not state today’s installed base. Savills, on its own definition, counted about 1.8 GW of operational IT capacity in the first half of 2026.2 We do not combine the two. Crisil’s 90% also measures something other than the GPU figure in our 2 November piece: Rhodium Group reported that nearly 80% of the GPUs subsidised under the IndiaAI Mission “reportedly sit unused”.3 Leased halls can be full while the chips in some of them sit idle.
02The constraint Crisil names: power in three cities
About three-quarters of the ~6 GW is expected in Visakhapatnam, Mumbai and Hyderabad.1 How much electricity that means for each city is in our 1 October piece on the grid; Crisil’s new measure is the load set against each city’s demand today.
By FY2030, Visakhapatnam's data centres could equal 80% of the city's peak power demand today
Data-centre capacity by fiscal 2030 as a share of each city's current peak power demand, %, Crisil Ratings estimate
Source: Crisil Ratings, press release · as of 3 November 2026 · Crisil's rounded figures (“around”); it does not give the megawatts behind them
Crisil’s other risks: investments “typically precede cash generation by 24-36 months”, so developers’ debt stays high; “a meaningful contract renewal track record is yet to be established”, in the words of Associate Director Nitin Bansal; and as hyperscalers gain bargaining power, “any pressure on rentals may weaken project returns”. Pricing has “remained broadly stable so far”, and rents are 30–35% below peer markets, Director Anand Kulkarni said.1
03For an enterprise buying space in India
Sources
- Crisil Ratings: India's data centre capacity set for 5x surge by 2030 — 3 November 2026
- Indian Infrastructure: India's data centre capacity additions grow 59 per cent in H1 2026 (Savills India data) — 22 July 2026
- Rhodium Group: Hyperscaler Heaven? A Reality Check on India's AI Ambitions — 27 October 2026
Related on TechBag: the AWS hub, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, the three hyperscalers building in India.
Disclosure. TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view.
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