India’s data-centre industry is in overdrive. In just a few weeks, the country’s biggest operator, NTT Data, cut a deal with Oracle to expand its footprint; New Delhi promised a 20-year tax holiday for anyone who can stomach building 100MW+ centres; and regulators are prepared to drop long-delayed Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) rules any day now.

Everyone wants a piece of India’s digital exhaust, and everyone wants it now.

The competition so far is not exactly plucky startups with a few racks in Gurugram. NTT controls 6% of the global market, according to a Kotak Mutual Fund report, and is already courting three states for new sites. Its tie-up with Oracle—the same Oracle that hosts OpenAI’s infrastructure and is suddenly the hottest name in data infrastructure today—is not yet public. But The Ken has learnt that the two are indeed joining forces.

Reliance, never one to be left out of an arms race, is pouring concrete in Jamnagar, Gujarat, for what it insists will be the world’s largest data centre.

The real suspense is regulation. India has already tried this playbook: in 2018, the RBI forced all payment data to be stored locally, sending Visa and Mastercard scrambling to build here. A 2020 draft went further, demanding sweeping localisation rulesData localizationIt is a policy that requires certain data to be physically stored and processed within the borders of the country where it was generated, restricting cross-border data transfers. so tough they still cast a shadow on OpenAI’s StargateStargate ProjectIn January 2025, OpenAI announced its new company, Stargate, which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years in data centres. Stargate is also being brought to India, and OpenAI is in talks with Indian companies like E2E, Yotta, Sify and CtrlS. project. Now the industry is bracing for the DPDP Act. If it requires social-media platforms to keep Indian user data inside the country, demand for local racks could spike overnight.

Alok Bajpai, NTT Data India’s managing director, sketched the scenario: “Suppose it comes tomorrow for Linkedin or Facebook.