The share of the private sector in Larsen & Toubro’s order book is going up as the company is taking up several data centre projects. Blue Star said it is developing chillers for data centres and looking at partnerships, while Voltas expects data centres will soon touch 30% of its B2B business from less than 5% at present.
AI Projects
LG India also is “tapping into the data centre cooling market,” its chief financial officer Dongmyung Seo told analysts recently.
P Ramakrishnan, head of investor relations at Larsen & Toubro, in its recent earnings call said one of the major reasons for the share of private sector order inflow going up in the last 4-5 quarters is because of a higher amount of real estate transactions or real estate development across commercial, residential and data centre development.
The data centre growth in India has been catalysed by artificial intelligence projects with large companies like Google, Amazon Web Services, Meta and Reliance announcing multi-billion dollar investment in recent months.
L&T, LG, Voltas and Blue Star among cos buoyed by big IT cos’ expansion in country
Rising Investments
India’s IT load capacity totalled 1.4 GW as of the second quarter of 2025, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research.
This is expected to double in the next two years. Local and global technology firms have announced investment of more than $32 billion in the last two years to expand data centre infrastructure in India.
Overall investment in the sector, estimated at $60 billion between 2019 and 2024, is set to hit $100 billion by 2027, according to Deloitte.
Growth Opportunities
Blue Star managing director B Thiagarajan said the company is developing some equipment such as chillers and exploring partnerships in high-tech products like liquid cooling.
He said the margins are good in the data centre segment and there is potential for high double digit pace of growth.
Mukundan Menon, managing director of Tata-owned Voltas, said the commercial AC business and domestic project business have great opportunities with the company starting to manufacture centrifugal chillers.
Data centres’ contribution to the company’s MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) segment can go up to 30% from less than 5% at present, he said.
