This year, India hosted the AI Impact Summit, the fourth in an annual rotating global series previously held in the UK, South Korea and France, signalling the country’s growing position in the global AI landscape. For investors, the summit highlighted growing hyperscaler investments to data centre infrastructure and AI deployments in finance and retail that have moved beyond the pilot stage. These developments are unfolding alongside major regulatory changes from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which are affecting market transparency and, together with developments in AI, reshaping the foundations of India’s digital economy.

This report tracks India’s digital economy across three areas, from the earliest indicators of growth and investment activity to those closest to end-consumption:

• Private funding and capital flows: Private capital tends to move ahead of public market activity, making it a useful early indicator of where institutional conviction is building.
• Data centre pipeline tracking: Physical infrastructure takes years to deliver, so tracking what is in the pipeline now gives a clearer picture of where capacity will and won’t exist in the near term.
• Consumer behaviour: Transaction and online engagement data tend to reflect behavioural shifts before they show up in earnings or macro figures.