Data Centre Capacity by Indian State: Maharashtra Leads as AI Projects Spread Beyond Established Hubs

Market Snapshot: Where India Stands in 2026

India’s data centre infrastructure market is in a new build-out cycle driven by cloud adoption, enterprise digitisation and AI workloads. The latest comparable city-by-city dataset is Cushman & Wakefield’s H1 2026 update, published 23 September 2026. It reports 1,789 MW of operational IT capacity, 178 MW added in the half-year and 3,860 MW of upcoming supply through 2030, across 147 data centres and 33 providers.

The upcoming supply splits into 509 MW under construction (13.2%) and 3,351 MW at the planning stage (86.8%). Planning-stage capacity has no committed build schedule, so the near-term supply picture is far smaller than the headline pipeline.

Other providers measure the market differently. CBRE reports about 1.75 GW operational at end-H1 2026 and about 130 MW added, while JLL reports a 1.6 GW mid-year snapshot and 85 MW delivered. These are separate estimates with their own scopes, so this article shows them side by side and does not average them.

Status labels used in this article: reported (a published figure for a stated period), pipeline (planned or under construction, not live), announced (company or government statement), forecast (a provider outlook) and NextMSC calculation (marked *).

State Rankings: Operational Capacity and Pipeline

India does not publish a directly comparable state-by-state operational IT-load census, so the sources report city markets. Mapping those markets to states gives a transparent proxy: Mumbai and Pune to Maharashtra, Chennai to Tamil Nadu, Bengaluru to Karnataka, Hyderabad to Telangana and Kolkata to West Bengal. Delhi NCR is kept as a separate multi-state row.

* Pipeline ÷ operational is a NextMSC calculation from the reported figures. State rows are proxies built from city-market figures and are not an official state inventory. Source data: Cushman & Wakefield H1 2026. Delhi NCR is shown but not ranked because its capacity cannot be assigned to one state.

Maharashtra holds more than half of live capacity

Maharashtra’s proxy of 1,023 MW is nearly five times Tamil Nadu’s 214 MW. Mumbai alone accounts for 890 MW, or 49.7% of the national figure. CBRE’s end-September 2025 benchmark gave Mumbai a 53% share of a 1,530 MW market, and its H1 2026 report gives 52%, so concentration has eased only marginally on that provider’s basis.

The second tier is tightly packed

Tamil Nadu (214 MW), Karnataka (162 MW) and Telangana (151 MW) sit within about 65 MW of each other, and Delhi NCR (183 MW) falls inside the same band. Their pipelines diverge sharply, which is where the ranking is likely to change.

Pipeline reshapes the order

On upcoming supply, Maharashtra still leads with 1,984 MW, but Telangana moves to second place with 710 MW, ahead of Delhi NCR (387 MW) and Tamil Nadu (368 MW). Karnataka’s 100 MW pipeline is smaller than its 162 MW live base, and West Bengal’s 84 MW is small in absolute terms but nearly four times its 22 MW current stock.

Beyond the Established Hubs: Project Signals

The announced project map now reaches past the Mumbai–Chennai corridor. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh all feature in the AI-optimised data centre infrastructure plans of hyperscalers and large Indian groups. Most of these are future supply: a groundbreaking, MoU or expected go-live does not prove commissioned IT load.

Selected source-backed projects only, not a complete census. Capacity, investment and status are as disclosed by each source, and some projects may already sit inside consultant pipeline estimates, so the MW and investment values must not be added together or to the national pipeline. Source data: company and government announcements listed in the NextMSC Source & Reference Sheet.

Two cautions apply. Google’s Visakhapatnam campus is described as gigawatt-scale, but the primary announcement gives no exact IT-load figure. Yotta’s Greater Noida facility was expected to go live by August 2026, and the release reviewed does not independently confirm commissioning.

Policy and Siting: What Shapes Where Capacity Goes

State incentives are now part of the siting decision. Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh have each listed new 2026 data-centre policies, Telangana is marketing dedicated clusters, and the Union Budget 2026–27 proposed a tax holiday to 2047 for eligible foreign cloud companies using India-based data-centre services.

Policy pages and budget announcements are not substitutes for the full legal notification, eligibility clauses and sunset provisions. Source data: Government of India, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Odisha policy pages.

Tamil Nadu is the clearest caution. Its official 2021 policy page states validity through 31 March 2026, so the current incentive regime needs confirming before any claim that it is active. Reuters reported on 9 October 2026 that residents are pushing back on proposed or expanding sites near Mumbai and in Andhra Pradesh over land, power, water and noise, a reminder that social licence affects timelines alongside capital.

Demand Signals: Absorption, Pre-Commitment and Investment

JLL reports H1 2026 net absorption of 101 MW, more than 20% above its three-year average, with 82% of it pre-committed by hyperscalers. That points to strong committed demand but a concentrated customer base. JLL also reported that Mumbai accounted for 48% and Chennai for 50% of the 85 MW delivered in the half-year.

On investment, CBRE counts USD 38 billion of commitments announced in H1 2026 and USD 173 billion since 2021. JLL’s outlook is that capacity could reach 6 GW by 2029, tripling from 1.6 GW, with USD 110 billion of investment needed. Commitments and outlooks are not capacity, and the two providers’ figures are not comparable.

AI demand also reaches upstream hardware markets. Our deep dive on AI memory shortage 2026 and PC prices covers how server allocation affects component supply.

Capacity and Demand Dataset

Every provider-reported capacity, supply, demand and investment record used in this article, with its period, type and source ID. Records from different providers are separate estimates and are not additive.

Source IDs map to publishers in the NextMSC Source & Reference Sheet. “Current” means a reported H1 2026 figure; “Historical” means an earlier period; “Forecast” is a provider outlook.

Methodology, Definitions and Data Limits

Data cut-off: 9 October 2026. Refresh: semi-annually, after the next Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE and JLL half-year releases, and sooner if a major project or policy changes status.

Capacity definition: operational capacity means MW of IT load as specified by each source. It is not gross building power, grid connection capacity, GPU count, investment value or ultimate campus scale.

State mapping: state figures are sums of Cushman & Wakefield city-market figures. The seven named markets total 1,755 MW operational and 3,633 MW of pipeline, against national headlines of 1,789 MW and 3,860 MW. The 34 MW and 227 MW differences are shown as unallocated residuals, not assigned to any state.

Provider scope: Cushman & Wakefield, CBRE and JLL use different market coverage, so totals, additions and absorption are never averaged or combined. The Telangana government portal’s roughly 200 MW live and 4.7 GW committed or early-stage figures are likewise kept apart from the C&W Hyderabad figure of 151 MW.

Blank states: the reviewed market update does not report capacity for other states and union territories. A blank means no comparable figure was disclosed, not zero facilities. Operator-listed facilities, such as CtrlS sites, are examples and not state totals.