Schneider Electric expects its India data center business to outpace the rest of its India operations over the next four to five years, according to Sumati Sahgal, the company’s vice-president for Secure Power and Data Centres, Greater India Zone, speaking to Reuters on Friday, May 23. Data centers currently account for 15% to 20% of Schneider Electric’s India business and are growing at a double-digit pace. The company expects that share to increase substantially. The statement arrives as India’s data center capacity sits at roughly 1.5 gigawatts – with projections pointing toward 6-7 gigawatts by 2030.
YourNewsClub frames Sahgal’s interview as a vendor-level data point in a story primarily about physical infrastructure: where AI compute capacity gets built, and who supplies the equipment that makes it run. Schneider Electric provides UPS systems, switchgear, power distribution units, precision cooling, and energy management software. These are not discretionary purchases. A data center that cannot manage power reliability or thermal load does not operate. Schneider’s presence in India is a proxy for how fast the physical layer of the AI build-out is moving.
The geographic expansion is the most specific data point. Investment is spreading beyond Mumbai and Chennai into Gujarat and Rajasthan – reflecting companies building capacity closer to end users. At 6-7 gigawatts by 2030, the India data center build-out is too large to route through two cities.
Demand comes from three directions simultaneously: hyperscalers building AI training and inference capacity, colocation operators, and enterprises seeking integrated infrastructure. YourNewsClub puts all three as active drivers rather than a sequential adoption wave – making India’s data center market structurally different from prior infrastructure build-outs. Sahgal described India as both a consumption and manufacturing hub for data center power and cooling equipment.
Owen Radner, who studies digital infrastructure as energy-information transport systems, draws a sharp distinction: “Data center capacity expansion in India is an infrastructure event, not a product event. Once a company builds a 100-megawatt campus in Gujarat, it does not decommission it on a product cycle. The Schneider presence there is a multi-decade commitment signal. The right comparison is power grid expansion, not smartphone adoption.”
Astute Analytica projects India’s data center market at $31.36 billion by 2035, at a compounded annual rate of 13.37%. Schneider Electric Infrastructure, the India-listed entity, manufactures transformers and switchgear locally. Local manufacturing gives Schneider a lead-time advantage in a market where delivery speed for critical infrastructure directly affects project timelines.
Jessica Larn, who covers macro-level technology policy, reads India’s data center expansion as a structural policy outcome: “India’s government has pushed data localisation and digital infrastructure investment for years. What Schneider’s comments reveal is that the private sector has internalised those signals as a bankable investment thesis. When a French industrial company publicly states that its India data center segment will outpace the rest of its India business, the policy has worked.” YourNewsClub covers the AI infrastructure build and India’s regulatory environment as the lens through which this story makes most sense.
Grid modernisation is the second growth theme. India’s power grid is under strain from the same forces driving data center demand: AI workloads consume energy in patterns the existing grid was not designed to absorb. Schneider’s grid modernisation portfolio sits alongside its data center business, positioning it to benefit from both the demand and the infrastructure upgrade required to support it.
Three things to watch: whether Schneider’s India data center share crosses 25% in the near term; whether the Gujarat and Rajasthan projects move from announced to operational; and whether the hyperscaler mix shifts toward AI-optimised facilities. Your News Club views those three as the leading indicators that distinguish a real structural shift from a projection.
Schneider Electric reported group revenues of roughly 37.4 billion euros in fiscal year 2025. India’s significance lies less in current revenue than in forward positioning. YourNewsClub expects the India data center segment to become one of the company’s most cited growth examples in investor materials by 2027 – not because the number will be enormous, but because that growth rate will be hard to find elsewhere in a developed industrial business.