India’s data centre industry is poised for significant expansion in the coming decade, with market projections indicating a growth from $5.55 billion in 2025 to $13.11 billion by 2034. A report by Quess Corp highlights the increasing demand for a skilled workforce to support the country’s expanding digital infrastructure, revealing a notable gap between infrastructure investment and the availability of specialized talent. The sector is expected to grow by approximately 136% over the period, driven by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% between 2026 and 2034.
The current workforce supporting India’s data centre and cloud infrastructure ecosystem comprises around 86,000–90,000 professionals spread across more than 50 providers. However, the report points out a significant challenge for the industry’s future growth, transitioning from concerns about capital and power availability to a shortage of a specialized, “skill-ready” workforce. As the industry progresses towards a hyperscale phase with large gigawatt-scale campuses, the report raises concerns about an emerging “infrastructure-talent mismatch.”
The Supply Sufficiency Index (SSI) for AI Operations is currently at a low of 47, indicating a critical shortage of talent required to manage the next generation of data infrastructure, according to the report. Kapil Joshi, CEO of IT Staffing at Quess Corp, emphasized the need for India to enhance its technical capabilities to match the expanding infrastructure. He highlighted the importance of bridging the skill gap for sustaining the resilience of the digital infrastructure, especially as artificial intelligence workloads are projected to represent nearly 30% of total data centre capacity by 2026.
The report also forecasts a surge in demand for specialized skill clusters such as cloud and DevOps, security, and compliance, with a projected 133% increase by 2029. However, the IT operations sector faces a 73% shortage in crucial operational roles like infrastructure monitoring, incident response, and network management. In terms of demand for data centre capacity, the IT and telecom industry lead at 48%, followed by the BFSI sector at 20%, and government workloads at around 10%, as per the report.
