India's Real Estate Giants Shift Focus to Data Centers
India’s data revolution is driving a transformation in real estate, as large developers shift their focus from homes and shopping malls to data centers. With significant financial resources, large land holdings, and construction capabilities, Indian developers are collaborating with global technology companies to develop the infrastructure for the digital economy of the future.
As cloud adoption, AI applications, and digital transactions grow in popularity, the skyline in India is silently changing not only with homes and towers but also high-security, high-density data center facilities. Traditional builders, who used to be strictly residential and commercial builders, are beginning to build the digital infrastructure that enables the world’s fastest-growing internet economy. This process is emerging a new group of “digital landlords” who define not only where we live, but how we will work in the online economy.
Real Estate Developers Investing in Data Centers in India
1. Anant Raj Limited
Through its subsidiary Anant Raj Cloud, the company has committed to developing a substantial data center portfolio of over ₹10,000 crore (~$1.2 billion) with a targeted capacity of more than 300 MW by 2031-32 across Manesar, Panchkula, and Rai in Haryana. They are also collaborating with Orange Business for the delivery of its cloud services (with other partners potentially in the wings). The company has raised additional shares through a Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) to focus its growth specifically on data centers. The company also has scalable campuses and a total of 28 MW currently live.
2. Hiranandani Group / Yotta Infrastructure
Yotta is the operator of the largest Tier IV data centers in India, located in Navi Mumbai (NM1), Noida (D1), and Gujarat, with future developments in Pune, Powai, Chennai, and even international developments in Dhaka and Nepal. They are launching AI-ready hyperscale centers, including an AI Cloud campus at AI City in Hyderabad, and developing high-performance infrastructure for cloud, AI, and edge computing.
3. Lodha Developers
It is developing a 370-acre “Green Integrated Data Centre Park” in Palava City (Mumbai Metropolitan Region) with a ₹30,000 crore (~$3.6 billion) investment and generating 2 GW of power capacity. The facility will have multiple global and domestic players and generate 6,000 jobs. Lodha has also sold 24 acres in Mumbai to STT Global Data Centres for further hyperscale data center buildout.
4. Prestige Group
Prestige is quickly entering the data center space with projects planned in Bengaluru (with NTT for a 100 MW facility), Pune (with Maharashtra for a data center/logistics hub in Talegaon), and expansion plans for Mumbai, Chennai, and the NCR. Prestige’s strategy is to build core and shell infrastructure for hyperscalers to lease and operate such as AWS and NTT, with a construction cycle of 3–5 years.
5. Rustomjee (Keystone Realtors)
Rustomjee has allocated 5 million sq ft of land in Thane (a suburb of Mumbai) to develop data centers. The company is looking for strategic/financial partners and is using both legacy township locations and power/fiber connectivity in order to attract tenants who require hyperscale centers and AI-related infrastructure. Their movement diversifies their Mumbai-centric portfolio and aims to position an underdeveloped Mumbai data center market as a leading data center market in India.
