There’s one company that exemplifies the current moment in India’s AI investments. It doesn’t make advanced semiconductors or train large language models. Instead, it rents out space to companies that do.

The arrangement is called colocation—think of it as real estate for servers, where clients plug in their machines while the “landlord” provides power, cooling, and connectivity.

Sify Infinit Spaces, the data-centre arm of Sify Technologies, is India’s poster child for this setup. It will be behind the country’s first IPO for a company of its kind.

By tracking the colocation industry’s growth around the world, there’s incredible promise based on demand. Capacity worldwide has more than doubled since 2019 to hit 42 gigawatts (GW) in 2024, and could reach 65 GW by 2027. Sify should head the same way, if not grow even faster.

But that assumes India has enough power to support rapid scaling. One Nvidia GB300 rack can draw enough electricity to power 100 homes in the US, and it takes thousands of racks to train a foundational model.

Even Sify acknowledges the problem in its DRHP by referring to power supply risk, grid reliability risk, and related issues.

Sumit Chakraborty, The Ken’s head of desk, looks into Sify Infinit Spaces’ IPO and the company’s promise in this edition of Make India Competitive Again, as read by Rahel Philipose.

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