Why India Belongs on Your Network Roadmap

By Matt Simpson, Executive VP

India is the world's fourth-largest economy and accelerating fast. Here's why it should be on your network roadmap.

Few markets combine scale, speed, and government intent the way India does right now. With a digital economy on track to reach USD $1 trillion by 2030, hyperscalers committing tens of billions in fresh investment, and connectivity infrastructure undergoing a generational upgrade, India has become one of the most consequential expansion decisions a technology business can make.

We explore what’s driving India’s growth, what it means for cloud and network infrastructure, and how Megaport can get you there.

India’s digital economy is accelerating

India is currently the world’s fourth-largest economy and is on track to become the third-largest by FY2031. The scale of this opportunity is hard to overstate.

The region’s digital economy is a major part of that story, projected to account for nearly 20% of GDP by 2029–30 — outpacing the growth of traditional sectors. Underpinning this economy is a thriving technology industry, with India’s IT sector alone set to reach $350 billion in 2026, contributing close to 10% of GDP. With India already ranking third in the world for the digitalization of its economy, this growth will create incomparable opportunities for global businesses.

Government investment is strengthening India’s digital infrastructure

India’s digital growth isn’t happening by accident; a sustained program of government investment and policy reform is actively accelerating it.

The Digital India initiative has driven the adoption of digital infrastructure and services across both private and public sectors since its launch in 2015. Government-led programs including Digital India, Startup India, and Make in India are boosting cloud adoption nationally, while the introduction of the Personal Data Protection Bill and sectoral data regulations are pushing businesses toward secure, compliant cloud infrastructure.

The BharatNet project has extended high-speed internet access to homes across the country, with 719,000 kilometers of optical fiber infrastructure laid to reach rural and underserved areas as of February 2026.

On the compute side, the IndiaAI Mission is building out the country’s AI capacity at scale. By May 2025, India’s national compute power had crossed 34,000 GPUs, with the mission focused on AI infrastructure development, supporting innovation, and ensuring ethical AI use.

Cloud and data center demand is growing

According to IDC, India’s public cloud services market — spanning IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS — is expected to reach $30.4 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 22.6%.

A few converging trends are driving this growth:

• Multicloud adoption: Indian organizations are increasingly embracing multicloud strategies to improve infrastructure efficiency and optimize costs.
• AI on public cloud: A significant portion of AI services are expected to be deployed on public cloud platforms, further accelerating adoption.
• Data center expansion: The India data center market is projected to reach $21.03 billion by 2031, anchored by locations like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, and Visakhapatnam.

Hyperscaler investment

The major cloud players have made their position clear. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have pledged a combined $67.5 billion in Indian investments since October 2025 — with 80% of those commitments made in December 2025 alone.

The specifics are significant:

• Amazon has announced an additional $35 billion investment in India by 2030 to accelerate digital growth, expected to support 3.8 million jobs.
• Microsoft is investing $17.5 billion to scale up cloud and AI infrastructure in the region, offering both “Sovereign Public Cloud” and “Sovereign Private Cloud” services.
• Google has firmed up plans to invest $15 billion toward building data center capacity for a new AI hub in southern India.

When hyperscalers move this decisively, the infrastructure ecosystem follows.

India’s connectivity infrastructure is catching up

India’s connectivity story is one of rapid progress against a backdrop of structural gaps — and the gap is closing fast.

Three major subsea cable projects are set to quadruple India’s international internet capacity, delivering faster and more reliable bandwidth into the country. India now hosts 17 international submarine cables, though the region currently accounts for just 1% of the world’s cable landing stations — a gap India’s telecom regulator TRAI is calling to expand tenfold.

On mobile, India’s 5G rollout has been one of the fastest in telecom history. Mid-band 5G population coverage has passed 90%, with 394 million 5G subscribers by the end of 2025 — a number expected to cross one billion by 2031.

Connecting to India with Megaport

With government programs, hyperscaler investment, and enterprise demand all moving in the same direction, India’s growth trajectory is undeniable. The hard part is turning that opportunity into infrastructure that can scale across cloud, network, and data center environments without adding more provisioning drag.

Megaport helps businesses deploy the private compute, network, and storage infrastructure they need on demand, globally. For teams expanding into India, that means faster access to cloud on-ramps, data centers, and a global network fabric through a software-defined platform built to simplify regional expansion.

Whether you’re connecting into Mumbai or Chennai for the first time, extending a multicloud architecture across the region, or preparing infrastructure for AI and data-intensive workloads, Megaport helps remove the friction between where your business needs to be and how fast your infrastructure can get there.

Get a free demo from our team to discover how Megaport can support your India expansion.