India is set to benefit from the war in West Asia and may emerge as a regional hub for cloud infrastructure, as the crisis has triggered a surge in demand for data centre capacity in the country from global hyperscalers and Gulf-based clients.

In addition cloud providers are also receiving requests to contract more GPU (graphics processing unit) capacity.

Industry sources indicate that escalating instability in the region is prompting companies to shift workloads and infrastructure from hubs such as Dubai to India, driving a sharp rise in co-location enquiries.

Global cloud majors including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are seeking larger co-location deals, with Indian data centres, they said.

As per one source, AWS is talking to at least five co-location providers like CtrlS, Sify, NTT, CapitaLand and even Airtel’s Nxtra to build their data centres to host public cloud regions.

While businessline reached out to players like Nxtra, they declined to comment on the matter.

Huge inquiries

Demand for data centre capacity has spiked in the last 3-4 weeks, ranging between 200-500 megawatts, Sunil Gupta, Co-Founder, Managing Director and CEO of prominent cloud infrastructure provider Yotta Data Services told businessline. Big inquirires from the Middle East are in a particular rush to close contract. These are huge inquiries even at a charge of $60 per kilowatt, he said.

“Since data centres cannot be opened and closed on an ad-hoc basis like offices, these contracts have long-term implications. In the midst of the global chaos, there is a golden opportunity for India to become a regional hub for data centres,” said Gupta.

Overall, India stands to benefit from a structural reallocation of global cloud and data infrastructure demand, particularly as a secondary hub for the Middle East and Asia corridor, said Neha Singh, Co-Founder, Tracxn. Stating that these gains will materialize over time, she said the geopolitical developments will act more as a long-term catalyst rather than a source of immediate disruption.

“In the near term, hyperscalers are likely evaluating India as a contingency location for regional workloads, particularly as disruptions in Gulf-based infrastructure raise operational risks,” said Singh.

Strategic leverage

Companies also have an option of migrating workloads to data centres in Europe or the US. Ultimately, where these workloads shift is a factor of cost and India has a clear advantage in pricing, as per RackBank.

“Building a 100MW AI facility in India is roughly $5-6 million compared to a place like Singapore and APAC where it is around $12-14 million. India gives double capacity at the same cost. For a hyperscaler, it’s enough money to build an entirely second facility for free,” said Narendra Sen, Founder & CEO, RackBank.

Overall, India’s public cloud market is growing at least 22 per cent CAGR between 2024 and 2029. The market was close to $14.5 billion by 2025-end and is estimated to reach anywhere between $32-35 billion by 2029, as per Rajiv Ranjan, Associate Research Director, Converged and Hyperconverged Systems, Core Infrastructure,IDC.

GPU crisis

Aside from data centres, Indian cloud infrastructure providers have received huge requests for GPUs. Gupta reported that US-based GPU providers have contracted all of Yotta’s GPU capacity, with contracts ranging from $16 million for a year to $1.3 billion for four years.

These orders from international players are for global requirements and not India. While Gupta assured that Yotta is commissioning an additional 30,000 B300/B200 GPUs over the next four months for India requirements, there has been noticeable concern regarding GPU shortage in India.

Stakeholders have flagged severe shortage of DC components like GPUs, indicating a short-term GPU crisis for the country. One said the current allocation of GPUs for Indian entities is insufficient coupled with a low commercial uptake.

Published on April 5, 2026