Official sources said this is the second-biggest investment proposed by an Indian conglomerate in the country’s data-centre sector, following Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) proposed AI data centre and cable landing station, which is coming up with an estimated investment of ₹1.08 trillion in Andhra Pradesh. The Odisha project is expected to generate about 1,000 jobs.
The project, cleared by the high-level clearance authority chaired by Chief Minister (CM) Mohan Charan Majhi, comes a year after the group unveiled a $15 billion (₹1.4 trillion) data-centre and AI-infrastructure project in partnership with Google in Vizag. This is the largest data-centre project announced in the country so far.
The Odisha data centre proposed by High Density Data Centre Ltd, a subsidiary of the Adani group, was among the 27 projects worth around ₹2.47 trillion recently cleared by the state government. Data centres, IT/IT-enabled services, and AI emerged as the largest investment segment, accounting for around ₹1.42 trillion through four projects.
Hemant Sharma, additional chief secretary of Industries, said High Density Data Centre Ltd is a subsidiary of Adani Infra (India) Ltd, and its proposal to set up a hyperscale data centre has been approved. “The company has proposed to develop a 1 gigawatt (Gw) data centre. The state government has already earmarked around 250 acres of land at Naraj for the project,” he told Business Standard.
The group’s data-centre arm has one operational unit, AdaniConneX, in Chennai, and is building separate centres in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. AdaniConnex is a 50:50 joint venture between Adani Enterprises and Sweden’s EQT-owned EdgeConneX.
Earlier this month, the Adani group and Abu Dhabi-based International Holding Company (IHC) had signed an agreement with the Odisha government for a ₹50,000 crore hyperscale AI data centre in Odisha. However, IHC’s involvement in the data centre project proposed by High Density Data Centre Ltd has not been officially announced. “The ₹1.04 trillion data-centre project has been proposed as a standalone venture,” a source said.
Apart from this, three more data-centre projects with a combined investment of ₹38,391 crore have been approved by the state government. The proposals are: HCLTech’s ₹14,257 crore AI-optimised data centre in Khordha, Sentraforge AI’s ₹22,634 crore AI data centre and global capability centre (GCC) in Puri, and RKD Construction’s ₹1,500 crore data centre in Kataka district.
While HCLTech is setting up the data centre in collaboration with Indian frontier-model company Sarvam AI, Sentraforge AI, a joint venture of Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited (MEIL) and GVPR Engineers Limited, plans to construct a massive 120 megawatt (Mw) sovereign AI campus and GCC.
Vishal Kumar Dev, additional chief secretary of Electronics and IT, said the state government has earmarked the required land at Tangiapada near Info Valley on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar for the data centres proposed by HCLTech and Sentraforge.
“We have identified a land parcel of around 140 acres, which will be developed into a data-centre hub. Three data centres can be housed there,” said Dev. He also informed that HCLTech will be provided a separate land parcel in Infocity for its proposed ₹730 crore global development centre.
The Adani proposal is a milestone for Odisha, which has traditionally attracted large investments in the metals, mineral, and mining sectors. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) data centre, being set up with an investment of ₹169 crore, is nearing completion, while the state government is setting up its own next-generation data centre at a cost of ₹266.48 crore.
Among private players, Zoho Corporation’s first major data centre facility in eastern India is coming up in Khordha district with an investment of ₹306 crore, besides the proposed mega investments by HCLTech and Sentraforge.
