Tata, Reliance, Adani outspend Big Tech on digital factories

In a striking inversion of global trends, Indian’s largest businesses are poised to out-invest Silicon Valley's giants in the country’s data centre build-out.

- Shouvik Das & Varun Sood

While Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Adani Group and Tata Group have collectively pledged $28 billion in investments over the next few years, US Big Tech firms—Google, Microsoft and Amazon—have committed slightly less, at under $25 billion.

The difference might not seem much, but the nuance here is that while the American firms are digital natives, India’s investments are led by traditional conglomerates diversifying into the factories of the artificial intelligence (AI) age.

To be sure, another $6.5 billion is in the pipeline from other Indian players such as Hiranandani Group-owned Yotta Data Services, Bharti Airtel’s Nxtra, and Hyderabad-based CtrlS—taking the India tally well beyond Big Tech’s planned spend.

Breaking up the numbers, RIL is expected to spend up to $15 billion for every 1GW of data centre capacity.