India data-centre boom boosts select stocks sharply

India's financial press reports the country's data-centre industry is entering a multi-year growth phase driven by accelerating digitalisation, cloud adoption, and rising AI demand. Citing brokerage Nomura, the Economic Times says India's data-centre IT load expanded from about 350 MW in 2019 to nearly 1.5-1.6 GW in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of roughly 29%, versus about 20% globally, while India's share of global capacity rose from about 1.5% to 2-3%. Coverage also notes a KPMG projection, cited by the Economic Times, that India's data-centre revenue could approach $45 billion by 2033.

The clearest market winner is Sterlite Technologies. Reported 2026 gains vary by date: Business Standard noted the stock up about 350% in late May, while Upstox reported a rise near 450%, outpacing chipmakers such as Samsung and SK Hynix. The rally followed a multi-year product award worth more than $1 billion from a global hyperscaler for optical-connectivity products supporting AI data-centre build-outs, to be supplied across FY27 to FY29. Business Today reports CLSA reiterated an Outperform rating and raised its target on Sterlite by about 60% to Rs 655, estimating roughly 49% EBITDA CAGR between FY26 and FY29. Business Today also reports HFCL, another optical-fibre and telecom-gear maker, has rallied more than 150% in 2026.

Industry-pattern observation: suppliers of data-centre equipment and connectivity tend to see demand track hyperscaler capital spending and enterprise cloud migration. Rising AI workloads increase requirements for higher rack-power density, accelerated compute, denser fibre and power distribution, and larger on-site cooling. Those constraints typically shift procurement toward vendors that can deliver high-density power, high-bandwidth interconnects, and efficient cooling.

Visible order wins and rising IT-load metrics have concentrated investor interest in infrastructure-adjacent names, and the reported share gains reflect that re-rating rather than realized multi-year earnings. For practitioners, the same demand translates into greater need for deployment expertise, power-systems engineering, and network design in regions adding capacity quickly, along with longer supply-chain lead times for specialty cables and power gear.

• •Whether reported hyperscaler orders convert into multi-year revenue visibility for listed suppliers.
• •Quarterly IT-load and capacity disclosures from operators, and updated broker EBITDA and order-book assumptions.
• •Local power and land availability, plus policy signals on data-centre incentives.
• •Whether 2026 share gains hold as execution data arrives, given how fast these stocks have re-rated.