Mumbai, Sept. 28 -- India missed the first wave of the global artificial intelligence (AI) boom-the powerful chips and frontier models built largely in the US and China. But a quieter version of that boom is already showing up in a narrow set of Indian stocks, even as the broader market struggles. A basket of 42 Indian companies that Goldman Sachs calls "AI enablers"-suppliers of power infrastructure, data centre hardware, semiconductors and related equipment-has risen an average of 60% since January 1, even as the Nifty 50 has fallen 12% over the same period, according to a 17 September note from the bank's research division. "This divergence challenges the prevailing view that India offers limited exposure to the global AI theme," the note said. The basket-with a combined market capitalization of $670 billion-includes Adani Green Energy, Tata Power, Cummins India, Kirloskar Oil Engines, CG Power, Kaynes Technology and Syrma SGS Technology, among others. Goldman separately named Larsen & Toubro, Reliance Industries, Adani Enterprises and Bharti Airtel as data-centre and AI operators and leaders. The gains are concentrated in a small sliver of the market. The 42 companies make up about 2% of the roughly 1,800 Indian listed companies Goldman Sachs screened, but account for about 13% of their combined market capitalisation of $5 trillion. "Beneath the surface of a laggard benchmark, a distinct and rapidly compounding pocket of AI-infrastructure beneficiaries, predominantly mid, small and micro cap, are delivering some of the strongest equity returns in India," wrote Goldman Sachs analysts Amorita Goel, Sunil Koul, Timothy Moe, Alvin So, John Kwon and Terry Chan. What's driving the rally is demand, not sentiment. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Tata, Adani and Reliance are all making large datacentre investment commitments in India, and that buildout is creating orders across the supply chain - electricity and transmission equipment, generators, cooling systems, servers and semiconductor infrastructure. The opportunity for Indian suppliers, however, is concentrated in a specific slice of that spending. "Setting up one gigawatt of data-centre capacity requires roughly Rs.70,000 crore of investment. About 60% of that goes into hardware such as GPUs, storage and memory, where much of the spending currently goes to suppliers outside India. The remaining 40% is where Indian companies have a significant opportunity, across power, electrical equipment and other infrastructure needed to build data centres," said Amit Chandra, vice-president of research at HDFC Securities. "With India still at an early stage of the buildout, the opportunity for these suppliers is substantial."...