New Delhi, June 6 -- Bernstein expects India's data center capacity to surge to the higher end of 5-8GW by 2030 from 1.5GW today, driven by Middle East capacity constraints pushing demand here.

The biggest "right to win" won't be compute hardware but access to land and substation power in the right locations. Navi Mumbai is already seeing a fight for land at prices higher than last transactions, and players with locked thermal equipment, grid connectivity and large land banks will dominate.

Bernstein's industry checks show DC capex in India, ex-compute, is Rs 50 Cr/MW, lower than the US. Colocation landlords that build and lease infrastructure to hyperscalers/enterprises who bring their own GPUs. Payback is 5 years and capex is $8-15Mn ...