PDF ↗
Research Primer · Dart Consultants

India's Data-Center Physical Infrastructure

A Ground-Up Primer on the power, cooling, cabling and construction layer beneath every AI data centre — the physical half of the AI boom no GPU benchmark measures — and the twenty listed companies building India's slice of it.

Primer sections11
Companies20
Value-chain layers5
Ratings7B·7H·6S
Anatomy of a data centre's physical infrastructure

The Primer

11 sections, read start to finish or jump to any one
Orientation

How to read this report

This is a sister volume to Dart Consultants' "India's AI Compute Stack" primer, and it exists because that report deliberately excluded an entire…

Read →
Section 1

The vocabulary

Four terms decide almost everything about how reliable a facility has to be, and therefore how much engineering difficulty — and margin — sits behind…

Read →
Section 2

The two problems

As with every Dart Consultants primer, one real structural asymmetry sits underneath this entire industry. Here is data-centre physical…

Read →
Section 3

Why keeping the power on is the hard problem

Three reasons the hard half does not scale the way the easy half does — and one honest structural difference from this report's sister volume on the…

Read →
Section 4

Catalog equipment vs. custom engineering

Why does a conventional EMS-style manufacturer or a generalist EPC contractor get any data-centre work at all, if the hard half is this demanding?…

Read →
Section 5

Classes & the value ladder

This report's twenty companies sort into five sub-categories: civil construction/EPC, cabling, cooling, backup power/batteries, and power equipment…

Read →
Section 6

The industry & demand drivers

One large, genuinely fast-growing demand cycle sits underneath this report, and — just as in the sister compute-stack primer — published estimates of…

Read →
Section 7

The anchor constraints — scarcity and the state

Unlike the sister compute-stack report's single, concentrated anchor (Nvidia) plus three clean government instruments, this report's constraints are…

Read →
Section 8

The parts the data misses

Three things this report's own research surfaced that a simple reading of "which companies serve data centres" would miss entirely. This is where…

Read →
Section 9

The companies

Twenty NSE/BSE-listed companies touch this value chain today, from a ₹5.3 lakh crore diversified construction-and-engineering conglomerate to a…

Read →
Section 10

Synthesis

India's data-centre capacity is genuinely scaling — operational capacity crossed ~1,700MW in 2025 with hyperscale pre-committed capacity running well…

Read →
Section 11

Ratings summary

Ratings key, used consistently across every company report in this document and identical to the methodology used in this report's sister volume,…

Read →
Notes

Methodology, data caveats & who we are

This primer follows Dart Consultants' standard first-principles method: identify the one real structural asymmetry inside the product (§2), derive…

Read →

The Twenty Companies

7 BUY · 7 HOLD · 6 SELL
BUYVOLTAMP

Voltamp Transformers Ltd

The cheapest name in the power-equipment cluster, carrying this report's single strongest data-center order-mix data point

Target ₹13,224 · CMP ₹10,879 · +21.6%
BUYENRIN

Siemens Energy India Ltd

The strongest growth profile in this report's grid-equipment cluster, with a real, if still unquantified, AI-data-center partnership

Target ₹4,053 · CMP ₹3,228 · +25.6%
BUYARE&M

Amara Raja Energy & Mobility Ltd

The cheapest stock in this report's entire universe — a real, scaling battery-storage business priced like a legacy industrial, with a data-center angle that is genuine but secondary

Target ₹918 · CMP ₹796 · +15.3%
BUYPOLYCAB

Polycab India Ltd

India's largest wires & cables maker, with this report's cleanest financial reconciliation and a dual-AAA balance sheet — the data-center angle is real but still analyst-driven, not company-disclosed

Target ₹10,032 · CMP ₹8,400 · +19.4%
BUYKEI

KEI Industries Ltd

Steady 23% revenue CAGR, a three-agency AA+/A1+ endorsement, and management's own ₹25,000 crore data-center number — real, but still forward-looking, not yet booked

Target ₹5,584 · CMP ₹4,650 · +20.1%
BUYTECHNOE

Techno Electric & Engineering Company Ltd

Commissioned, not merely announced — the most credible pure-play data-centre EPC vertical in this report's construction category, still cheap at 23.3x

Target ₹1,238 · CMP ₹1,030 · +20.2%
BUYKPIL

Kalpataru Projects International Ltd

A diversified EPC compounder with margins moving the right way — but the weakest-evidenced data-center linkage of any construction name in this report

Target ₹1,647 · CMP ₹1,446 · +13.9%
HOLDPOWERINDIA

Hitachi Energy India Ltd

Genuinely excellent fundamentals, priced for a scarcity premium the India entity itself has not confirmed

Target ₹34,408 · CMP ₹32,700 · +5.2%
HOLDABB

ABB India Ltd

The clearest management-quoted pricing-power evidence in this report, priced at a multiple sell-side itself cannot agree on

Target ₹7,730 · CMP ₹7,270 · +6.3%
HOLDBLUESTARCO

Blue Star Ltd

The strongest confirmed cooling-specific data-centre business in this report — beside a record order book that has not, this year, translated into higher profit

Target ₹1,607 · CMP ₹1,532 · +4.9%
HOLDFINCABLES

Finolex Cables Ltd

India's largest diversified cable maker looks cheap and debt-free on the surface — but two different EBITDA numbers and a live promoter voting-rights dispute complicate the read

Target ₹1,552 · CMP ₹1,411 · +10.0%
HOLDLT

Larsen & Toubro Ltd

Rated on infrastructure, energy and IT scale, not on data centers: L&T-Vyoma is real, but at roughly one-hundredth of one percent of group revenue, not yet the story

Target ₹4,017 · CMP ₹3,885 · +3.4%
HOLDSIEMENS

Siemens Ltd

A high-quality franchise wrapped in a reporting mess this report cannot fully unwind — and only a diluted data-center play regardless

Target ₹3,766 · CMP ₹3,914 · (3.8)%
HOLDTHERMAX

Thermax Ltd

The most credible named hyperscale cooling order in this report — sitting inside the same year as an 85% profit collapse from a legacy EPC project

Target ₹3,419 · CMP ₹3,552 · (3.7)%
SELLKEC

KEC International Ltd

A record order book, a shrinking margin — commodity EPC execution under structural pressure, with a brand-new, unproven data-centre angle layered on top

Target ₹349 · CMP ₹404 · (13.6)%
SELLAHLUCONT

Ahluwalia Contracts (India)

A 35-40% NCR minimum-wage shock has erased the margin story, and CARE's own downgrade trigger already looks breached, unconfirmed

Target ₹476 · CMP ₹585 · (18.6)%
SELLGVT&D

GE Vernova T&D India Ltd

A record backlog built on the up-cycle's tailwind, priced as if the cycle never turns — while order intake already says otherwise

Target ₹3,480 · CMP ₹4,385 · (20.6)%
SELLVOLTAS

Voltas Ltd

The best cross-checked data-centre order-book evidence in this report, undermined by a 79x multiple on a profit that halved

Target ₹819 · CMP ₹1,111 · (26.3)%
SELLSCHNEIDER

Schneider Electric Infrastructure Ltd

The clearest brand-exposure trap in this report: the "Schneider = data-center power" story sits in an unlisted sister company, not these shares

Target ₹515 · CMP ₹1,214 · (57.6)%
SELLSTLTECH

Sterlite Technologies Ltd

The most material, best-quantified data-centre revenue story in this report's universe — wrapped in the least reliable financial data of any company in it

Target ₹191 · CMP ₹819 · (76.7)%
Educational material only — not investment advice. Dart Consultants is not a SEBI-registered Investment Adviser or Research Analyst.