Gujarat launches Viksit Data Centre Policy 2026-29

What happened

In July 2026, Gujarat launched the Viksit Data Centre Policy 2026-29 — the state's first dedicated data-centre policy — targeting ₹6 lakh crore in investments and 7.5 GW of capacity, with Dholera positioned as the anchor hub for hyperscale AI data centres. The policy offered power, land and tax incentives for data centre developers, and Meta, Reliance and Adani were reported among some 20 firms expressing interest.

The background

Until this policy, Gujarat's data-centre story ran through generic industrial incentives. A dedicated policy changes that: it names the industry, prices its inputs and gives developers a framework they can underwrite. That matters because data centres are among the most site-sensitive investments in the digital economy — they chase cheap and reliable power, fibre connectivity, land at scale, and fast approvals. The policy was built on groundwork laid earlier in the year, when the L&T Vyoma data-centre MoU of February 2026 put Dholera's name on the state's digital map for the first time in a concrete way.

The timing was not accidental. India's data-centre build-out has been accelerating as AI compute demand reshapes the economics of the sector. Hyperscale campuses — the largest class of data centre, operated by or for cloud providers — require hundreds of acres, tens of megawatts of power and fibre routes that connect to national and international backbones. A state that wants to capture that investment wave needs a policy that answers each of those requirements specifically, not a general industrial incentive package that data centre developers have to interpret.

The details

The mechanics are the usual levers of industrial policy applied to compute: power tariffs and connectivity guarantees address the largest operating cost, land incentives address the capital cost, and fast-track approvals address time-to-revenue. Dholera's pitch inside the policy is specific: a greenfield activation area where power and digital trunk infrastructure were already planned into the ground — the plug-and-play logic of the city's infrastructure design — plus land at scale that an established city cannot offer hyperscale campuses. The 7.5 GW capacity target is substantial — it represents a large share of India's projected data-centre demand through the policy period and, if built, would position Gujarat among the top data-centre states nationally.

The interest from named firms — Meta, Reliance, Adani — also signals something about the market's view of Gujarat's bid. These are companies that evaluate sites globally, not just domestically. Their expression of interest does not constitute a commitment, but it does mean the policy's design passed a first commercial screen. The 20-firm figure suggests the policy reached a wider audience than a handful of incumbents.

Why it matters to Dholera

Why it matters to Dholera: policy frameworks create the incentives — power tariffs, approvals, infrastructure guarantees — that data-centre developers underwrite before committing capital. For a region whose industrial base is being built around a fab, data centres add a second, power-hungry demand layer that justifies the grid and fibre investments in the trunk plan. The AI-era demand curve is exactly the kind Dholera's energy architecture was sized against — heavy industrial loads, underground distribution, a renewable base adjacent to the SIR.

There is also a diversification argument. A region dependent on a single fab is concentrated risk; a region with fab plus data centres plus airport-driven logistics is a portfolio. Data centres bring their own construction timelines, their own tenant relationships and their own demand for skilled labour — different enough from semiconductor manufacturing to spread the region's economic dependence across more than one industry.

The bigger picture

By September 2026, investment commitments had risen to approximately ₹17 lakh crore — a figure we track separately, with appropriate caution about the gap between announced intent and built capacity. The policy is the scaffolding; the buildings, substations and fibre routes are what turn scaffolding into an industry. What gives the Dholera anchor-site positioning weight is that the city's infrastructure was designed for exactly this kind of tenant — power, land and digital backbone planned together, not bolted on later.

What came next: the ₹17 lakh crore investment target announcement in September 2026.

Related chapter: Ch. 18 — Investment & economic architecture →