🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Mumbai’s market dominance explains Equinix’s investment focus

• Equinix is putting money into India’s biggest data center hub, since Mumbai holds 54% of national capacity 1.
• Mumbai’s capacity is expected to rise from 1,337.09 megawatts (MW) in 2025 to 4,606.91 MW by 2031 2.
• Supply is tight, so operators can charge more as vacancy across the market has fallen to 4.3% 1.
• Maharashtra’s 2024 policy offers incentives for qualifying data centers, including a 100% stamp-duty waiver plus a permanent electricity-duty exemption 2.

The data center gold rush is reshaping India’s energy and real estate sectors

• Equinix’s expansion sits within a broader rush for capacity, with AdaniConneX, a data center joint venture between India’s Adani Group and US firm EdgeConneX, aiming for 1,000 MW 3.
• Yotta Data Services, an Indian data center company, has bought 16,000 Nvidia H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), chips widely used for AI computing, for its Shakti Cloud 3.
• Data center electricity use in India is forecast to reach 2.6–3% of national generation by 2030, up from 0.8–1% in 2024 3.
• Meeting that demand would take 15–30 gigawatts (GW) of added power capacity, which the report frames as about 10% of planned renewable energy capacity 3.
• Real estate is shifting too, as traditional developers rebrand as “digital landlords,” meaning property owners focused on leasing facilities for digital infrastructure such as data centers 4.