The data centre boom in India has been a boon for electric generator manufacturers.
Cummins India Ltd’s share of revenue from data centres widened to 14% in FY26 from less than 2% seven years ago. Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd is eyeing data centres as a key revenue driver while targeting $2 billion in annual revenue by FY30. Sterling & Wilson’s energy subsidiary, Sterling Green Power Solutions Pvt Ltd, is said to be planning a ₹1,500 crore public listing while fielding data centre orders of above ₹3,000 crore.
Electric generators are mandatory in all data centres as infrastructure that adds redundancy to operations. In most cases, diesel-powered generators, such as what Cummins sells, are popular for their proven reliability and ability to switch on rapidly.
India expects data centres to add 26.3 GW of demand by FY32 but building the grid to support them could cost several trillions of rupees and take years. With data centres operating continuously, generator sets have become imperative to keep their IT infrastructure, cooling systems and lighting running in the event of an outage.
Generators accounted for almost 9% of total data centre capital expenditure, brokerage PL Capital said in a note on 16 April. With data centres spending ₹65 crore per megawatt and with an estimated 2.2 gigawatt (GW) in additional capacity expected by FY30, PL Capital projected a net revenue opportunity of ₹1.35 trillion by 2030.
Cummins India, which is 51% owned by US parent company Cummins Inc, has been the biggest beneficiary.
“For the full year, the data centre business would have contributed 30% to 35% of our overall power generation domestic revenue,” Shveta Arya, managing director of Cummins India, told analysts on 29 May.
Market leader
With domestic power generation earning ₹4,758 crore for Cummins in FY26, data centres contributed up to ₹1,665 crore in FY26, according to Mint research.
Amit Anwani, lead analyst at PL Capital, said Cummins accounted for 55% of all generators sold to data centres as of June. Kirloskar Oil Engines, US engineering giant Caterpillar and MTU, the power systems brand owned by UK-based Rolls-Royce, accounted for the remainder.
“Cummins being an early entrant into the market, with a global footprint, has major hyperscalers as clients already,” Anwani said. Mint could not independently determine its clients.
“Cummins India’s total sales for FY26 stood at ₹11,950 crore,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed response to Mint. “However, we do not disclose segment-wise revenue contributions as a percentage of overall company revenue.”
Nevertheless, Cummins India’s data centre generator set revenue appears to have grown faster than originally projected. In October 2019, Ashwath Ram, then managing director of Cummins India, told analysts that data centres generated ₹75-80 crore for the company. This, per Mint research, was the first time that Cummins revealed revenue from data centres.
“It is growing at a CAGR of 10-12% annually,” Ram said at the time.
However, data centres have grown at over 54% annually for the company in the intervening seven years. In January 2021, Ram told analysts the company powers Microsoft’s and Amazon’s India data centres.
Revenue drivers
While Kirloskar Oil Engines has not disclosed a breakup of revenue, chief executive officer Rahul Sahai told Mint in an interview on 2 September that data centres are important revenue drivers in the near future.
“We expect to grow rapidly in that space and that is bound to happen from a level of supply and service entrenchment in India,” Sahai said, adding that by 2030, Kirloskar OEL is targeting $2 billion ( ₹19,000 crore) in operating revenue. Financial filings show ₹7,701 crore in annual operating revenue for the company in FY26.
“Last year, we supplied products to 25 data centers. These products start at 750 kVA (kilovolt-amperes, a measure of electric power capacity) and we go all the way to 4,000-5,000 kVA. We can support any requirement of data centres,” Sahai said.
Diesel generators used for large-scale data centres are commonly 3.5 to 4 MW (5,000 kVA) per unit, so building a 30- to 60-MW data centre would require eight to 15 generators before accounting for redundancy, according to a report dated 1 August 2025 on the McKinsey & Company website. Scaling this to a 1-GW data centre would require up to 290 generators, it said.
Sahai, however, refrained from any guidance on how much of the targeted revenue will come from data centres.
“This segment will have a role to play in our goal, and we are very deeply focused on data centres,” he said.
Sterling’s orders
Sterling Green Power is privately held and has not disclosed a revenue figure from data centres yet. According to media reports in July, the company is preparing a ₹1,500 crore initial public offering later this year. Emails sent to Sterling Green Power did not elicit any response.
Credit rating company Crisil said in two reports between 3 June and 10 August that the company’s total new orders from clients rose from ₹1,100 crore in FY25 to ₹2,900 crore in FY26. By 30 June, this climbed to ₹3,700 crore. While Sterling Green’s FY26 operating revenue stood at ₹1,178 crore, Crisil also said almost ₹3,100 crore of its current orders are from data centres.
This pace of growth for the Indian generator set industry is likely to continue in the long run, analysts said.
“This is structural, not a blip. Even by conservative estimates, data centre growth in India implies a 2.5x increase,” said Vijay Agrawal, managing director of infrastructure at Equirus Capital. “The genset business opportunity is structural rather than cyclical because backups scale up in an almost 1:1 proportion with the IT load of data centres. There’s no way to shortcut that ratio.”
For now, Agrawal said Cummins and Kirloskar OEL are expected to capture the biggest chunk of the data centre generator set market —with other suppliers comprising the rest.