Data as Capital

Sitharaman signals India's ambition to be a digital infra hub with expanded safe harbour rules that align data centre growth with IT and GCC needs

- NAINI THAKER

In the 2026-27 Union Budget, India reframed cloud as infrastructure and compute as capital, making a decades-long bet that the factories of the digital era are data centres and AI (artificial intelligence) clusters, and that the export engines are GCCs (global capability centres) building global platforms from Indian soil.

In her Parliament speech on February 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman highlighted the need for data capital—hyperscale data centres, AI compute clusters and cloud platforms—via long horizon incentives and a broader digital economy push. In her most sweeping bid yet to anchor global cloud infrastructure in India, Sitharaman announced: “Recognising the need to enable critical infrastructure and boost investment in data centres, I propose to provide tax holiday till 2047 to any foreign company that provides cloud services to customers globally by using data centre services from India. It will, however, need to provide services to Indian customers through an Indian reseller entity.”