Piyush Goyal discusses power, regulatory issues with data centre industry

Data centre industry stakeholders pushed for adequate power availability, regulatory measures, and streamlined single-window approvals in a meeting with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on September 1, an official release said on Wednesday.

The roundtable brought together representatives from the Central and State Governments, CEOs and senior representatives of global hyperscalers, data centre developers and operators, investors, infrastructure providers and other key stakeholders.

The Commerce and Industry Ministry said that stakeholders discussed measures to ensure adequate and reliable power availability, including cluster-based transmission and substation planning, Day-1 sanctioned load, dual power feeders and facilitation of renewable energy procurement across State boundaries.

The need for DC-ready land banks and pre-identified power-ready parcels was also highlighted.

"The roundtable also reviewed regulatory measures aimed at reducing project timelines and improving investment certainty, including streamlined single-window approvals and appropriate building regulations for data centres," it said.

Discussions focused on Ease of Doing Business and faster deployment of data centre infrastructure, particularly in the areas of power, land, regulatory and fiscal issues.

It added that the discussions highlighted the rapidly increasing demand arising from cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads.

Hyperscalers accounted for more than 80 per cent of data centre absorption in the first half of 2026, underscoring India's emergence as an AI infrastructure destination.

The government expects investments in the data centre sector to reach around USD 200 billion, reflecting the scale of the opportunity created by India's rapidly growing digital economy and AI ecosystem, it added.

Senior representatives from the Governments of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh, along with representatives from around 46 data centre companies, participated in the roundtable.

The dialogue will serve as a foundation for actionable, time-bound and high-impact reforms aimed at accelerating investment and innovation, strengthening India's digital infrastructure and positioning the country as a trusted global data centre hub.