In sum – what to know:
$100m sovereign cloud plan – BharathCloud plans to invest up to $100 million over five years to build AI-ready sovereign cloud and edge infrastructure across India.
JLL as exclusive advisor – JLL will support site selection, design, and portfolio optimization for cloud centres across metro and Tier-II/III locations.
AI, 5G, and edge focus – The strategy targets enterprise and public-sector workloads driven by AI, IoT, 5G, and data sovereignty requirements.
BharathCloud has appointed JLL as its advisory partner to support the development of AI-ready sovereign cloud infrastructure across major Indian cities and selected international locations.
The Indian company plans to invest up to $100 million over the next five years, subject to board approvals, financing arrangements, regulatory clearances, and market conditions. Under the terms of the agreement, JLL will act as exclusive advisory partner, providing support across colocation site selection, design consultancy, and portfolio optimization.
The initiative targets a wide geographic footprint, covering India’s largest metros—including Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Kolkata, and Pune—as well as Tier-II and Tier-III cities such as Vizag, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Chandigarh, and Bhopal.
The partnership builds on BharathCloud’s earlier collaboration with DE-CIX India, reinforcing its strategy to create a distributed, edge-focused sovereign cloud ecosystem. The company aims to position itself as an orchestrator enabling the convergence of AI, IoT, and 5G technologies for enterprise and public-sector use cases.
By integrating DE-CIX’s interconnection platform with BharathCloud’s sovereign cloud infrastructure, the alliance seeks to establish what the company describes as India’s first fully functional “digital triangle,” designed to support scalable, secure, and low-latency digital services.
Padma Reddy Sama, co-founder at BharathCloud, said: “This strategic partnership with JLL is a key milestone in advancing India-first, enterprise-grade AI cloud infrastructure. Together, we will roll out sovereign, AI-powered cloud centrers starting with at least two in every metro and expanding into Tier-II and Tier-III cities while ensuring top-tier security, scalability, operational efficiency, and compliance with India’s data sovereignty requirements.”
Rachit Mohan, APAC lead of data center colocation leasing at JLL, said: “The cloud center market is experiencing a boost as India’s data center landscape, with capacity set to surge from 1.25 GW in 2025 to an impressive 10.5 GW by 2035—an eightfold increase in just one decade. The convergence of AI infrastructure buildouts, cloud market expansion, 5G deployment, and government-led digital initiatives is creating a perfect storm of opportunity.”
The India’s data center industry is poised for explosive growth, with capacity projected to surge 77% by 2027, reaching a staggering 1.8 GW, according to a previous JLL report. “This growth has been driven by continuous scaling of operations by Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) leading to sharp surge in demand for Indian data centre industry. The impact of artificial intelligence and its application is expected to further propel demand,” JLL said
In a separate report, JLL had stated that Mumbai continued its reign as India’s data center capital, with a 54% share of total industry capacity as of the end of the first half of 2025.. The city’s strategic advantages—including robust fiber connectivity, established business ecosystems, and proximity to international cable landing stations—reinforce its position as the preferred location for hyperscale deployments and enterprise colocation requirements, JLL said.
