Piyush Goyal Chairs Meet To Boost AI, Data Centre Investments

SUMMARY

The discussion with CEOs focussed on strengthening the policy ecosystem, regulatory processes and digital infrastructure to bolster investments in AI and data centre sectors

Goyal said that the Centre plans to position India as a global nerve centre for data-driven innovation and AI excellence

The exponential growth of AI applications has led to a surge in data centre requirements, with India alone expected to shore up its data centre capacity to 9 GW by 2032

Commerce minister Piyush Goyal yesterday chaired a CEO roundtable on fostering ease of doing business for data centre and artificial intelligence (AI) companies.

In a post on X, Goyal said that the discussion with CEOs focussed on strengthening the policy ecosystem, regulatory processes and digital infrastructure to bolster investments in AI and data centre sectors.

“Emphasised the government’s vision to position India as a global nerve centre for data-driven innovation and AI excellence. Also reinforced our commitment to building a future-ready, knowledge-based digital economy in line with the vision of Viksit Bharat,” added Goyal in the post.

There was no clarity on which CEOs and companies attended the roundtable.

The discussion comes at a time when the exponential growth of AI applications has led to a surge in data centre requirements. If reports are to be believed, India’s data centre capacity is projected to rise from 1.2 GW currently to 9 GW by 2032.

As a result, the cumulative capital expenditure, excluding servers, to build this data centre infrastructure is projected to bring in an estimated $30 Bn to $45 Bn to India shores.

While hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are expanding their capacities in the country, homegrown players like Yotta, AdaniConneX, Reliance, and Hiranandani Group too are bolstering their games, quietly turning India into a strategic hub for AI infrastructure.

However, this AI data centre boom is rife with difficult trade-offs for policymakers. Concerns remain over excess energy and water utilised by these servers for their cooling systems, which is sometimes equivalent to those consumed by entire towns.

Moreover, most of India’s data centres are concentrated in urban clusters like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru which have strong water demand and dwindling water tables.

Nevertheless, India continues to host more than 260 operational data centres, with most of them located in metros. Mumbai and Chennai alone account for nearly 70% of the total data centre capacity in the country.