THE DATA CENTRE EVOLUTION

THE AI BOOM IS PUSHING DEMAND FOR HIGHER-DENSITY GPUs, IMPROVEMENT IN COOLING TECHNIQUES AND A SHIFT TOWARDS TIER II TOWNS

- BY PRIYANKA SANGANI

In 2025, Ericsson came out with a set of interesting numbers-Indians are the biggest consumers of data, with an average of 36 GB per user per month. Whether it is enterprises storing data on the cloud, consumers streaming live sports or watching the latest web series-all this is generating copious amounts of data.

This, in turn, is driving demand for data centres at an unprecedented pace. Existing players are ramping up expansion plans and newer, nimbler companies are entering the segment in a bid to tap the growing demand for AI data centres.

In February, Yotta Data Services, a provider of hyperscale data centres, sovereign cloud, and AI compute infrastructure, announced an investment of $2 billion to deploy Nvidia Blackwell GPUs or Graphics Processing Units to form one of Asia's largest AI superclusters. Last year, information and communications technology company Sify Technologies announced an investment of $5 billion to modernise and expand its data centre operations. This is only the beginning.

Purushothaman KG, Partner and Head of AI and Technology Transformation, KPMG in India, believes this is a significant transition. "The India data centre story is, at its core, a story of the country's pivot towards a digital economy. This shift is being driven not only by India's role as a global exporter of technology services, but also by the rapid expansion of a domestic consumer base that is increasingly consuming digital and technology-led services," he says.