Netweb Tech, E2E Networks, Black Box: Data centre operators’ revenue likely to reach ₹20K cr annually by FY2028

Crisil estimates that the revenue of India's data centre operators, run by third parties, is expected to reach around ₹20,000 crore annually by fiscal 2028, translating to a robust annual growth of 20-22% as both enterprises and retail consumers dial up usage of digital technologies and platforms.

“The industry is expected to incur capex of ₹55,000-₹65,000 crore over fiscals 2026-2028 to cater to the surging demand. While this would require sizeable debt funding, growing EBITDA from operational capacities will keep leverage steady at 4.6-4.7 times and support credit profiles," Crisil Ratings Associate Director Nitin Bansal said.

Crisil said that the data centre industry growth will be driven by three factors -- rapid adoption of public cloud by enterprises amid ongoing digital transformation and technological advancements, growing investments in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and proliferation of 5G technology.

To cater to the buoyant demand, capacity in the industry is expected to double to 2.3-2.5 gigawatts (GW) by March 2028, the rating agency said.

Crisil said that despite the ramp-up in capex, credit profiles are seen as healthy, supported by stable cash flow.

"The healthy revenue growth of 20-22% for data centre operators will emanate from robust industry capacity addition, which is expected to double by March 2028," said Crisil Ratings Director Anand Kulkarni.

Kulkarni added, "The incremental capacity of 1.1-1.3 GW estimated to be commissioned during fiscals 2026-2028 is expected to achieve timely tie-up backed by strong demand and India's data centre density of just about 65 MW per exabyte, one of the lowest globally."

What is a data centre?

A data centre is a physical room, building or facility that houses IT infrastructure for building, running and delivering applications and services. It also stores and manages the data associated with those applications and services.

"Data centres started out as privately owned, tightly controlled on-premises facilities housing traditional IT infrastructure for the exclusive use of one company. Recently, they've evolved into remote facilities or networks of facilities owned by cloud service providers (CSPs). These CSP data centres house virtualised IT infrastructure for the shared use of multiple companies and customers," explains IBM.

Big players getting into data centre infrastructure

Major Indian conglomerates such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Reliance Industries (RIL) are making significant, multi-billion-dollar entries into the data centre infrastructure business, primarily to support the demand for AI and cloud services.

Last week, the country's largest IT services company, TCS, announced a tie-up with private equity major TPG for its upcoming data centre business, in which both partners aim to invest ₹18,000 crore.

TPG will invest $1 billion, or around ₹8,870 crore, in the AI data centre business christened as 'Hypervault' and hold a stake between 27.5% and 49% in the venture.

In September 2025, Reliance Industries said Reliance Intelligence has been incorporated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company.

The certificate of incorporation was received from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs on Tuesday, RIL said in a BSE filing.

"Reliance Intelligence Limited has been incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of the company on September 9, 2025," India's largest conglomerate said in the filing.

The AI push was announced by RIL at its AGM in August 2025, where Chairman Mukesh Ambani spoke about the formation of the new subsidiary, which will house large-scale AI infrastructure, as the company also unveiled new partnerships with global tech titans Meta and Google.

In November 2024, furthering its mission to build future-ready data centre infrastructure that is “Intelligent by Design and Sustainable by Choice”, Nxtra by Airtel, one of India’s leading data centre companies, deployed Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its data centres to drive operational excellence.

With this, Nxtra by Airtel has become the first data centre in India to leverage AI to build new-age digitised facilities engineered to drive smart capabilities like predictive maintenance, enhanced operational and energy efficiency, streamlined automation of operations and optimised capex utilisation.

How shares are performing

Shares of most data centre players were trading in the green in the opening deals on Wednesday. Netweb Tech was trading 0.41% higher at ₹3,310.90 on the NSE, while Aurionpro Solutions was up 0.55% at ₹1,075.10.

Black Box was trading nearly 2% higher at ₹526, while Railtel Corporation of India was also up 1% at ₹341.85 on the NSE.