Meta-Reliance Deal Shines Light on India’s Booming Data Centre Race — and the Indian Companies Building It

Mumbai, June 14: India’s data centre industry has a new landmark moment. Meta and Reliance Industries announced on June 10 a partnership to build a 168-megawatt AI-enabled data centre in Jamnagar, Gujarat — Meta’s first AI infrastructure facility in India — with Reliance constructing and operating the facility while Meta leases capacity, with options to scale.

The deal deepens a relationship that began with Meta’s $5.7 billion investment in Jio Platforms in 2020 and was followed by a $100-million joint venture to develop enterprise AI solutions. The Jamnagar facility will be powered by renewable energy and cooled using desalinated seawater, with Meta committing to cover the full cost of energy and water required for its operations there. The deal arrives as India’s data centre industry is fast emerging as one of the fastest-growing globally, with Nomura projecting the country’s total capacity to hit 7 GW by 2030, aided by a 20-year tax exemption the government has extended to hyperscalers using domestic facilities to service global clients.

The Meta-Reliance announcement is the latest in a series of hyperscaler bets on India as a preferred destination for AI infrastructure. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have all made major data centre commitments in India over the past 18 months, collectively channelling hundreds of billions of rupees into facilities, power and fibre. The reason is straightforward: India offers a rare combination of low-cost land, an improving power infrastructure, a large and rapidly digitising consumer base, and a government that has made AI infrastructure a national priority under the IndiaAI Mission, which carries a ₹10,372-crore outlay. India’s 600 million-plus smartphone users represent an enormous and growing demand source for local AI compute. Data centres are the physical answer to that demand.

Against this backdrop, a group of Indian conglomerates, infrastructure specialists and legacy operators have been quietly — and in some cases not so quietly — building the country’s data centre backbone. Here are the five biggest players shaping the landscape today.

India’s Five Biggest Data Centre Players

1. Adani Connex (NSE: ADANIENSOL / unlisted JV) — A 50:50 joint venture between Adani Enterprises and U.S.-based EdgeConneX, Adani Connex is running one of India’s most aggressive capacity expansion programmes. It is building hyperscale data centres across Chennai, Hyderabad, Noida and Mumbai, with a stated target of 1 GW of operational capacity by 2030. The Adani group’s existing control over ports, power transmission and renewable energy gives Adani Connex a structural advantage in securing the land, power and connectivity that hyperscale data centres require — making it a natural destination for global cloud and AI tenants.

2. Hiranandani Group — Yotta Data Services (unlisted) — Backed by the real estate muscle of the Hiranandani Group, Yotta operates the Yotta NM1 campus in Navi Mumbai — one of Asia’s largest data centres at the time of commissioning. Campuses are planned in Noida, Hyderabad and Pune. While Yotta is not listed on any exchange, the group’s deep infrastructure relationships and land ownership across major metros give it a competitive edge in site acquisition — the single biggest bottleneck slowing capacity expansion across the industry.

3. Reliance Industries / Jio (NSE: RELIANCE) — Now squarely in the frame as India’s premier AI infrastructure host after the Meta announcement, Reliance is building hyperscale data centres as part of the broader Jio Digital Infrastructure push. Jamnagar is the flagship site — Reliance itself describes it as one of the largest data centre campuses in the world under development. The Jio-NVIDIA partnership for GPU infrastructure and the Jio-BlackRock financial services venture make Reliance the most multi-dimensional — and most watched — AI infrastructure play on the Indian listed market.

4. Tata Communications (NSE: TATACOMM) — The only major listed pure-play in the segment with revenue already flowing. Tata Communications operates Tier III and Tier IV certified data centres in Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Bengaluru under its Tata Communications Data Centres (TCDC) brand, offering colocation, managed services and cloud connectivity to enterprise clients. Unlike the conglomerate-backed names, Tata Communications is not a data centre story that will materialise in the future — it is generating data centre revenue today, which makes it the cleanest earnings proxy for the sector in the listed space.

5. NTT Data — Netmagic (unlisted in India) — Japan’s NTT group owns Netmagic, one of India’s oldest and most operationally mature third-party data centre operators, with facilities in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. Not listed on Indian exchanges, but dominant in the enterprise colocation segment — the segment that serves mid-size companies that cannot afford to build their own facilities. NTT’s global balance sheet and operational standards have made Netmagic the benchmark for enterprise-grade data centre services in the country.

Ones to Watch

Two names worth tracking beyond this list: STT GDC India, backed by Temasek’s ST Telemedia, is expanding aggressively and has the balance sheet to compete with the biggest players. CtrlS Datacenters, which has filed for an IPO, could become the sector’s first dedicated listed vehicle for retail investors — an event that would almost certainly reprice the entire data centre peer group on Indian exchanges. For investors watching Reliance, Tata Communications and Adani Enterprises, the Meta-Reliance deal is not an isolated headline. It is confirmation that the global AI infrastructure buildout has found its Indian address — and that the race to own it has well and truly begun.

Sources: https://www.nseindia.com/get-quote/equity/RELIANCE/Reliance-Industries-Limited

https://www.nseindia.com/get-quote/equity/ADANIENT/Adani-Enterprises-Limited

https://www.nseindia.com/get-quote/equity/TATACOMM/Tata-Communications-Limited

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?PRID=2245069&reg=48&lang=1