India's greenfield compute hub, built from the ground up at Dholera SIR.
Three hyperscale data center projects have committed a combined ₹4 lakh crore (roughly $48 billion) to Dholera SIR. That figure places Dholera among the largest data center construction zones in Asia, and it came together in under two years. The projects come from three separate developers, each with different specializations and target markets, which reduces concentration risk and broadens the technology stack available at the site.
The Adani Group plans a ₹3 lakh crore ($36 billion) investment focused on sovereign AI infrastructure. The campus will run entirely on renewable power, drawing from Dholera's solar park and the broader Gujarat grid. Capacity targets 5 GW by 2035, building on AdaniConnex's existing 2 GW national footprint. This is not a conventional colocation facility. It is designed for government AI workloads, defense computing, and large language model training that requires data sovereignty. Indian data stays on Indian soil, processed by Indian infrastructure. The project aligns with the government's India AI Mission, which mandates sovereign compute capacity for sensitive national datasets.
Tillman Global Holdings is investing $10 billion (approximately ₹83,000 crore) in a Tier 4 data center complex. Tier 4 is the highest reliability classification, guaranteeing a maximum of 26 minutes of downtime per year. The facility will exceed 1 GW in total power capacity, roughly equivalent to the output of a large thermal power station. Tier 4 certification requires full redundancy on every critical system: power, cooling, networking, and physical security. The construction standards are comparable to those used in financial transaction processing centers and military command facilities. The proposal is in feasibility evaluation as of 2026, with a focus on high-performance computing, AI-driven cloud services, and big data analytics.
L&T Vyoma is developing a ₹25,000 crore ($3 billion) data center with 250 MW of IT load capacity. The MoU was signed in February 2026 at the India AI Impact Summit. The design emphasizes AI-readiness from the start, meaning it uses liquid cooling infrastructure rather than traditional air-cooled systems. Liquid cooling handles the heat density that AI chips produce, which can exceed 100 kW per rack. Traditional air cooling tops out around 15 to 20 kW per rack. The facility is being built in the Bhimtalav zone of Dholera SIR, with an operational target of 2028.
Existing data center markets in Mumbai and Chennai face land scarcity, power grid congestion, and rising real estate costs. Mumbai's data center land prices have tripled in five years. Chennai's coastal locations carry flood risk, as the 2015 and 2023 floods demonstrated. Dholera offers large, contiguous plots at reasonable rates, direct access to the 5,000 MW solar park for clean energy, and proximity to the Dholera International Airport and Mundra Port for physical logistics. The state government has designated data centers as a priority sector, which streamlines approvals. India's AI Mission and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023 both require expanded domestic compute infrastructure, and Dholera's greenfield status lets builders design for current needs rather than retrofitting old facilities.
Data centers are among the most power-intensive facilities per square meter. A single hyperscale hall running AI training workloads can consume 50 to 100 MW, enough to power a small city. The power must be clean, stable, and redundant. Dholera's solar park addresses this directly. The 49-kilometer underground 33kV cable network feeds power from the solar arrays to the industrial zone, with substations stepping voltage up to 200kV for bulk transmission. Torrent Power manages the local 400/220 kV gas-insulated substations with 1,500 MVA capacity. For cooling, Dholera's coastal location provides natural advantages. The Gulf of Khambhat offers cooler ambient temperatures compared to inland Rajasthan or Maharashtra, reducing the energy needed for mechanical cooling. The greenfield site also means cooling infrastructure can be designed around the specific thermal loads of each data hall, rather than adapting to existing building constraints.
Beyond the data centers themselves, Dholera has assembled a supporting ICT master plan. Cisco is handling high-speed networking and IoT integration. Wipro serves as the primary ICT consultant for smart city platform integration. IBM is the implementation partner for AI-driven analytics and smart governance. Together, these three companies are building the digital backbone that connects the data centers to the rest of the industrial zone, the command center, and the broader Gujarat grid. The plan also accounts for physical network redundancy, with multiple fiber optic routes connecting Dholera to Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and international landing stations.
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