Serentica Renewables is looking to build a dedicated infrastructure platform for data centres and could invest Rs 15,000-18,000 crore over four-five years in renewable energy capacity linked to a potential 1-GW power purchase agreement (PPA) with a data centre operator.
The company plans to bring together ready land, renewable power, transmission connectivity and fibre infrastructure under a single-window model for hyperscalers and data centre operators. It is already in discussions with “almost every major data centre company in the country”, Pratik Agarwal, Chairman of Resonia and Serentica Renewables and Managing Director at Sterlite Electric, told FE, though no agreements have been formally signed.
“If we eventually sign a 1 GW PPA with a data centre operator, the associated investment could easily be around Rs 15,000 crore, and perhaps even Rs 18,000 crore,” Agarwal said.
India’s data centre market is scaling up rapidly on the back of AI and hyperscaler demand. According to JLL’s India Data Centre 2026 Mid-Year Report, the country’s capacity is expected to rise from 1.6 GW in mid-2026 to 6 GW by 2029, while absorption in the first half of 2026 reached 101 MW, over 20% above the three-year average.
“We are building this as a dedicated vertical where our transmission, fibre and renewable businesses come together to provide a single-window infrastructure solution for data centre operators and hyperscalers,” Agarwal said.
The offering would include land, transmission connectivity, renewable PPAs, fibre and, at some locations, water connectivity for cooling.
The strategy differs from a conventional engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) model. Instead of waiting for a data centre operator to award a contract, the group plans to invest upfront in land and enabling infrastructure, prepare sites and then bring operators in as partners.
“Here, there is no contract. We are going and buying the land, getting the transmission connection, fibre connection and water connection,” Agarwal said. Once the infrastructure is ready, the group will approach multiple data centre operators to partner on the project.
The initial work is being pursued largely across western states. The company also plans to offer its integrated infrastructure proposition to Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, as the two states seek to attract large data centre investments.
Agarwal said the group does not intend to independently build and operate data centres. Once a site is developed, it could either sell the infrastructure platform to an operator or take an equity stake in the data centre. The final partnership structure is yet to be decided.
“We are doing the hardest jobs of putting the whole thing together,” he said, describing the model as an infrastructure partnership rather than an EPC arrangement.
For a 1-GW data centre, backend infrastructure alone could require around Rs 500-1,000 crore. Building the entire data centre could entail at least Rs 14,000 crore, though that investment would be made by the operator.
The larger opportunity for Serentica could come from supplying green power. The company has already signed contracts for around 9 GW of renewable capacity, representing about Rs 50,000 crore of investment.
“The broader message is that we are looking to partner with global data centre operators to establish gigawatt-scale data centres across multiple locations in India,” Agarwal said.