NEW DELHI: CtrlS Datacenters Ltd on Wednesday raised ₹7,000 crore, of which ₹4,000 crore in its own entity and ₹3,000 crore separately in a new joint venture, at a $4.8 billion valuation, or approximately ₹45,000 crore, in its first large-scale equity dilution, betting that a massive expansion in data-centre capacity will help it retain a significant share of India’s rapidly growing artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure market.
The domestic data-centre operator plans to build 4 gigawatts (GW) of capacity by 2031 and says it expects to retain a 15-20% share of India's market over the next five years, even as conglomerates, global cloud providers and infrastructure investors pour billions of dollars into the sector.
The deal values CtrlS at $4.8 billion, nearly double the $2.6 billion valuation assigned to the company in an exercise conducted in November last year.
The promoter Pinnapureddy family will continue to hold 91% of CtrlS, while CPP Investments will own 8.2%. The remaining 0.8% is held by friends and family investors, including Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath, Sridhar Pinnapureddy, chairman and managing director of CtrlS, told Mint.
CtrlS is among India’s four largest data-centre operators by active capacity, alongside NTT Global, Equinix and STTelemedia.
Betting on scale
Of the ₹7,000 crore investment, ₹4,000 crore will be invested directly into CtrlS. The remaining ₹3,000 crore will be deployed through a new joint venture between CtrlS and CPP Investments, in which the two partners will hold 52% and 48%, respectively.
CtrlS currently operates 370 megawatts (MW) of active data-centre capacity in India. By comparison, India’s total operational data-centre capacity stood at 1.12GW as of June 2025, according to a JLL report published in October last year. The consultancy projected India's data-centre capacity would reach 9GW by 2030.
Industry executives now say that figure could double as AI-driven demand accelerates.
While Pinnapureddy said its current active capacity is 370MW, a report by credit rating agency Icra Ltd said CtrlS had 130MW in active data centre capacity as of August last year.
CtrlS reported operating revenue of ₹1,561.8 crore in FY25, up 16.6% from a year earlier, according to filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Net profit rose marginally to ₹248.1 crore from ₹247.7 crore. The company has yet to file its FY26 financial statements.
Pinnapureddy said the company expects the expansion to help preserve its market position as competition intensifies.
The company is also expanding into smaller cities, including Patna.
“We already account for around 15% of the Indian market. By our evaluation, we expect India to house 18-20GW of data centres within the next five years, given the massive demand that AI is generating. We’re setting up data centres in cities that have never seen data centres before, such as in Patna where we’re opening very soon. Our expansion is in line with this demand.”
CtrlS plans to add 700MW of capacity by the end of calendar year 2027 and a further 800MW in 2028. The company also plans to hire 1,200 engineers this year, adding to its existing workforce of 1,850 core engineers.
“Looking at the scale at which the industry is growing, we’ll likely look at a fund-raise once every year. Eventually, we will go for an initial public offering (IPO). Though we have not started working on it yet, we’re looking at one to three years for our IPO,” the executive said.
AI infrastructure race
The investment comes as India sees a surge in announced AI and data-centre spending from conglomerates, infrastructure companies and global technology firms.
In February, Adani Group and Reliance Industries announced plans to invest $100 billion and $110 billion, respectively, in AI and data-centre infrastructure. Tata Consultancy Services last year unveiled a $6.5-billion plan to build a 1GW data centre and raised $1 billion from private-equity firm TPG to support the effort.
Renewable-energy company Greenko announced a $25-billion investment in a 1GW data centre in Greater Noida in January. Larsen & Toubro told Mint in March that it plans to invest $2.5-3 billion in data centres, while Airtel subsidiary Nxtra announced a $1-billion investment to build 1GW of capacity.
Global technology companies have also accelerated their India investments. Google, Microsoft and Amazon collectively announced more than $40 billion in planned data-centre investments between October and December last year. Meta this month announced a partnership with Reliance Industries for 168MW of local data-centre capacity, while OpenAI is evaluating opportunities in the country.
Joining more than $250 billion in cumulative intended investments in India's data centre industry, Pinnapureddy said that CtrlS is turning to outside equity for growth after years of relying largely on promoter capital and internal accruals.
Jayanth Kolla, cofounder of tech consultancy firm Convergence Catalyst, said that such funding rounds will increase in data centres in India due to the country’s rising role as an AI infrastructure provider for US clients. “The CPP is one of the world’s most stable investors, and CtrlS is a significant data centre operator for two decades, and the investment ticket reflects this. With US focusing on politically stable AI partners globally, large investments will likely expand in India’s data centres as a result,” Kolla added.
“So far, our expansion has largely been financed through internal accruals and promoter investments. We’d initially raised $10 million in exchange for equity in 2007, and a further $12 million a year afterward—but we bought back both those stakes in 2017. Four months ago, we also did a small friends and family round, which included Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath, who invested ₹250 crore in our company. We had diluted 0.8% equity in that round. This round, with CPP, is the first equity-led funding round at scale,” he said.
Powering growth
Pinnapureddy dismissed concerns around water consumption and energy use by data centres as “misguided projections”.
“We have not used any freshwater in any of our data centres, except for our earliest ones with about 3-5MW in capacity. There, sadly, we cannot change the mechanism. All our new and upcoming data centres are air-cooled, which is energy-intensive. Energy consumption, however, has to happen—look at any crucial sector in the modern world such as aviation or automobiles, and each fundamental infrastructure consumes energy heavily. We’re investing in green energy facilities to fund the energy draw as a result—both through in-house green energy operations, and power purchase agreements with distributors in Noida and Pune, as well as through National Thermal Power Corp.,” Pinnapureddy said.