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Dholera data centres
Dholera is being positioned as a data centre location within the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor, backed by a large anchor project and a supportive state policy. The clearest committed signal is the L&T Vyoma AI data centre, an announced Rs 25,000 crore, 250 MW green AI-ready hyperscale campus with an operational target around 2028. Alongside it, the Viksit Gujarat Data Centre Policy 2026-29 sets a state-wide target of Rs 6 lakh crore and 7.5 GW, naming Dholera as the primary location. Both figures are targets and announcements rather than built capacity. What makes the pitch credible is the Dholera solar backbone, which lets campuses pair with renewable power.
Last checked 2026-08-11 · every figure below carries its source
Why Dholera is being discussed for data centres
Dholera is a greenfield industrial node under the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor, planned from scratch under the Gujarat Special Investment Region Act of 2009. That blank-slate quality is part of why it attracts data centre interest. Planners can lay out power, water, fibre and road corridors in advance rather than retrofitting them into a crowded city. Three practical advantages come up repeatedly. First, a large solar park is being built nearby, which offers a path to renewable power that data centres increasingly want. Second, the Ahmedabad to Dholera expressway has been operational since 31 March 2026, shortening the trip to a major metro. Third, the site sits close to the Tata semiconductor fab under construction, which anchors a wider technology cluster. Data centres are buildings full of servers that need reliable power, steady cooling and good connectivity above almost everything else, and a purpose-built industrial region can be designed around those needs. None of this guarantees demand on its own. A location still has to attract operators, tenants and financing. What Dholera offers today is a combination of an anchor project, a state policy aimed squarely at the sector, and an energy story that fits where the industry is heading. The rest of this page separates what is announced from what is actually built.
The anchor project: L&T Vyoma
The most concrete data centre signal at Dholera is the L&T Vyoma campus. It was announced as a Rs 25,000 crore, 250 MW green AI-ready hyperscale data centre, with the agreement signed at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 and an operational target around 2028. These numbers deserve a careful label. Rs 25,000 crore and 250 MW are announced or agreement-stage figures, not capacity that exists on the ground today. A 250 MW campus, if fully built and filled, would be a very large facility by Indian standards, since power capacity is the standard way the industry measures data centre size. The description green AI-ready matters too. AI-ready points to the high power density that modern artificial intelligence training and inference demand, which run far hotter per rack than traditional web hosting. Green points to the intent to power the campus with renewable energy drawn from the Dholera solar backbone. Read together, the project is a statement of intent from a major Indian engineering group to build for the AI era at Dholera. Whether it lands on time and at the announced scale will depend on construction, grid connection, water arrangements and tenant demand over the next few years. Treat it as the leading indicator to watch, not as finished capacity.
The state policy target
The second pillar is policy. The Viksit Gujarat Data Centre Policy 2026-29, announced on 9 July 2026, sets a headline target of Rs 6 lakh crore of investment and 7.5 GW of data centre capacity, with Dholera named as the primary location. It is important to read this correctly. The Rs 6 lakh crore and 7.5 GW are a state-wide ambition across the whole policy horizon, not capital that has been committed to Dholera specifically. A policy target is a goal the government is trying to attract, not a signed pipeline. Even so, the policy matters because it signals where the state wants incentives, land allocation and grid planning to flow. When a government names a single location as the primary destination for a sector it is prioritising, that shapes the decisions of operators weighing where to build. Policies of this kind typically offer benefits such as power tariff support, stamp duty relief and faster clearances, all of which lower the cost of a capital-heavy facility. The honest way to hold both facts at once is this. Dholera has one large announced project and a state that has publicly committed to making data centres a priority with Dholera at the centre. The gap between a 7.5 GW target and today's built capacity is enormous, and closing it will take years of construction and investor confidence.
The green power backbone
The energy story is what ties Dholera's data centre pitch together. The Dholera Ultra-Mega Solar Park has an ultimate target of 5,000 MW, roughly 5 GW, aimed at around 2030. Today about 300 MW is operational, and a 1,000 MW Phase-I was sanctioned, with the Central Electricity Authority approval reported in September 2025 and Tata Power having commissioned a 300 MW plant. This staged build matters because data centres, especially AI campuses, are among the most power-hungry buildings in modern infrastructure. Having a large renewable source next door is exactly why the L&T Vyoma campus can be described as green AI-ready. It is worth being precise about scale. The 5 GW figure is an ultimate target for the solar park, not current output, and the roughly 300 MW operational today is a fraction of that goal. A single large data centre campus rated at 250 MW would itself consume a significant share of present solar output, so the industry and the solar park will have to scale together. The logic still holds. A location that can credibly offer renewable power at scale has a real advantage in attracting operators who face pressure to cut the carbon footprint of their computing. Dholera's advantage here is structural, built into the region's plan rather than bolted on afterwards.
Water, cooling and the reality check
Data centres need cooling, and cooling often means water, so water supply is a genuine question for any large campus. Dholera's smart-city Activation Area (the first phase of Dholera to get roads, water, power and drainage) includes a water treatment plant of about 50 MLD along with reservoirs and a recycled-water network, which is the confirmed water infrastructure serving the developed zone today. Longer-range supply, including the idea of coastal desalination, is discussed because Dholera sits on the Gulf of Khambhat coast, but no desalination plant is confirmed and its capacity or status is not established. It should be treated as a planned option under study, not existing infrastructure. Stepping back, the honest picture is a mix of momentum and open questions. On the confirmed side, Dholera has an operational expressway, a growing solar park, treated-water infrastructure in the Activation Area, and a nearby semiconductor fab, all inside a planned industrial region. On the announced-but-not-built side sit the L&T Vyoma campus and the state policy targets. Across the wider Dholera and NICDC (the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, the central agency behind the corridor) pipeline, over Rs 1.5 lakh crore of confirmed private investment has been reported, though that figure spans the whole corridor and should never be read as Dholera alone. For anyone assessing Dholera as a data centre hub, the useful habit is to track the anchor project's construction and grid connection over time, rather than the headline targets.