In June 2026 Tata Communications committed more than US$200 million, about ₹1,200 crore, to double its India data centre floor area to ten lakh square feet over three years. It did not state how many megawatts that is, and no subsequent disclosure has supplied the number. That omission is not unusual — floor area is the metric Indian data centre operators reach for when they want to announce growth without publishing capacity — and it is the reason this record is excluded from every total in this registry. Applied at ESDS density, ten lakh square feet is 93 MW. Applied at PDG Hyderabad density, it is 518 MW. The same commitment is a five-and-a-half-fold different fact depending on a number Tata Communications has not published.
1At a glance
2What was announced
| Item | Published | Missing |
|---|---|---|
| Investment | More than US$200 million, ₹1,200 crore | Allocation per site or per phase |
| Floor area target | 10 lakh sq ft after doubling | Current floor area, and how much is data hall versus support space |
| Horizon | Three years from June 2026 | Any annual or phase schedule |
| Capacity | — | Everything |
| Sites | — | Which cities, which campuses, new-build or fit-out |
| Customer | — | Any anchor tenant or pre-leasing |
The record is honest and it is empty. A ₹1,200 crore commitment to double a national data centre footprint is a material fact about the Indian market, and it cannot be entered into a capacity total because it does not contain a capacity number.
The registry therefore files it as an investment programme with zero megawatts and a written reason. That is the correct handling, and it is also the reason the registry’s totals are lower than the market’s: a reader who counted every announcement as capacity would add a hundred to five hundred megawatts here on the strength of a square-footage target.
3Ten lakh square feet is between 93 and 518 MW
| Density source | W/sq ft | 10 lakh sq ft implies | What that density is |
|---|---|---|---|
| ESDS, five Tier-3 sites | 93 | 93 MW | Services-heavy portfolio, low power density |
| Sify Hyderabad 01, low floor | 150 | 150 MW | Enterprise colocation, air-cooled |
| Colocation industry band, low | 200 | 200 MW | Common design point for 2015 to 2020 builds |
| Sify Hyderabad 01, high floor | 300 | 300 MW | Shared floor, high-density racks |
| NTT Bengaluru 4 | 367 | 367 MW | AI-ready, liquid cooling capable |
| PDG HY1 Hyderabad | 518 | 518 MW | Designed for high-density AI workloads |
The range is 5.6-fold, and it is not a modelling nicety — it is the difference between Tata Communications becoming the fourth-largest operator in this registry and becoming the largest by a wide margin.
At 93 MW it would rank below NTT at 273.2 MW operating. At 518 MW it would be nearly twice NTT. One unpublished number separates those two outcomes.
Floor area is published far more often than capacity because it is easier to announce and harder to audit. Every market report that converts square feet to megawatts at a fixed factor is guessing, and the factor they choose determines the answer.
A 4 W/sq ft error across ten lakh square feet is 40 MW. A density choice between the top and bottom of this table is 425 MW.
The registry does not make the conversion at all. Where an operator publishes only floor area, the record carries zero megawatts and a note, and the reader can see that the number is missing rather than inheriting someone else’s assumption.
4Why floor area is the wrong metric and the useful one
Floor area is the wrong metric for capacity and a good metric for three other things.
| Question | Floor area answers it | Capacity answers it better |
|---|---|---|
| How much land and shell is being committed | Yes | No |
| How much construction capex is coming | Yes | Partly |
| How much can be sold as colocation | Partly — data hall area only | Yes |
| How much power the local grid must supply | No | Yes |
| How the operator will rank nationally | No | Yes |
| Whether the commitment is real | As well as anything else | As well as anything else |
Ten lakh square feet is a real commitment to real construction. It is roughly 9.3 hectares of built space, or about the data centre floor of two NTT Bengaluru 4 campuses. The programme is material.
What it is not is a capacity claim, and the difference matters most in a diligence conversation. “We are doubling to ten lakh square feet” survives a follow-up. “We are adding 300 MW” would not, unless the number existed. Tata Communications has chosen the statement it can defend, which is more than most operators in this file have done.
5What would change this record
| Fact needed | What it would resolve |
|---|---|
| A megawatt or rack target | The whole record; any figure is better than none for ranking purposes |
| Current floor area and current capacity | Allows a density to be derived rather than assumed |
| Site or city split | Moves the record from national to state level, which is what buyers actually purchase |
| Data hall share of the ten lakh sq ft | Cuts the implied range by roughly half; support space is not sellable |
| Construction schedule | Converts a three-year programme into a capacity forecast |
The record stays at zero until at least the first and third exist. Two of the 242 records in this registry are Tata Communications investment programmes, and neither carries capacity — this one and the subsea expansion on PRJ-236. Both are material to the group’s strategy and neither is a data centre.
6Sources
Sources: Economic Times, 1 June 2026, reporting Tata Communications’ plan to invest more than US$200 million, about ₹1,200 crore, to double its India data centre capacity to ten lakh square feet over three years; Gridvik records PRJ-236 for the companion subsea commitment; Gridvik records PRJ-237 for ESDS density and PRJ-233 and PRJ-240 for the NTT and PDG densities used in the conversion table. No megawatt, rack or per-site figure has been published for this programme. Record verified 26 October 2026.