AI power demand + data localisation: The twin forces behind India’s data center boom

India’s data center industry is exploding—not just because of cloud computing or e-commerce, but increasingly due to artificial intelligence (AI) workloads and strict data localisation laws that require sensitive information to be stored and processed within the country, according to a Jefferies report.

Colocation capacity has already surged fivefold over the past five years to reach around 2 gigawatts (GW), and analysts now project another 5x jump—to nearly 10 GW by 2031.