India’s technology landscape is entering a new era of momentum, confidence, and global relevance.
The latest forecast from Gartner Inc. projects that India’s IT spending will surpass $176.3 billion in 2026, marking a robust 10.6% growth from the previous year and outpacing the global IT spending growth rate of 9.8%.
This projection is not merely a statistic—it’s a strong signal of India’s expanding digital footprint, the deepening adoption of advanced technologies, and the country’s emergence as a major global hub for innovation.
Over the past decade, India’s digital transformation has been guided by a combination of policy vision, private sector dynamism, and global market shifts.
The anticipated spending levels for 2026 underscore how these forces are converging to create an environment ripe for high-tech expansion.
Gartner’s forecast reflects the growing optimism across industries, governments, and global investors who see India as central to the future of cloud services, artificial intelligence (AI), software development, and data infrastructure.
One of the most compelling insights from Gartner’s analysis is the stellar rise of India’s data centre ecosystem, which is projected to record a remarkable 20.5% growth rate in 2026.
Although slightly moderated from the 29.2% surge predicted for 2025, this remains the highest growth among all IT segments in the country.
The expansion of data centres is being fuelled by multiple converging trends—accelerated cloud adoption, growing digital services usage, rising data localisation norms, and an unprecedented appetite for AI-powered applications.
DD Mishra, vice-president analyst at Gartner, emphasises that enterprises in India are rapidly scaling their cloud-first and AI-first strategies, driving sustained demand for infrastructure.
The easing of the temporary global uncertainty earlier this year has reset the pace of digital transformation and intensified investments in AI-capable data processing.
As AI models grow more advanced, real-time, and compute-heavy, the infrastructure backing them must scale accordingly—and India is responding with clarity and speed.
India’s growing digital ecosystem, especially its burgeoning AI user base, is another major force behind the surge in data centre investments.
With one of the world’s largest consumer markets for AI-driven services—ranging from fintech and ecommerce to healthcare and entertainment—international technology companies are recognising the strategic value of building local infrastructure.
As Naresh Singh, senior director analyst at Gartner, notes, India’s evolving regulatory framework around data privacy and sovereign cloud requirements is further driving global players to commit long-term investments in the country.
Established domestic giants like Reliance and the Adani Group have also entered the data centre space, intensifying competition and accelerating capacity creation.
Their entry symbolises how central data infrastructure has become to India’s growth story.
From hyperscale facilities to regional edge data centres, India is setting the groundwork for a future in which every digital service—from real-time payments to precision agriculture—is supported by a robust and locally managed cloud and data architecture.
Alongside data centres, the software segment is set for impressive expansion, projected by Gartner to grow 17.6% in 2026, reaching $24.7 billion.
This surge highlights how Indian enterprises are rapidly adopting advanced, AI-powered software solutions to drive efficiency, modernise their IT systems, and improve scalability.
As generative AI (GenAI) becomes more deeply embedded into digital tools, processes, and platforms, software purchasing patterns are transforming accordingly.
Gartner predicts that by 2026, global spending on software embedded with GenAI will exceed spending on software without it—an inflection point that signifies the global mainstreaming of AI-enabled innovation.
For India, a country that has both a massive digital user base and an expansive pool of IT talent, this transition brings immense opportunity.
Indian businesses, governments, and startups are not simply adopting GenAI—they are increasingly shaping its use cases, developing proprietary models, and embedding AI capabilities into core applications that serve millions.
Another key contributor to India’s IT growth trajectory is the IT services sector, which continues to be a pillar of innovation and employment.
Gartner forecasts that IT services spending will rise 11.1% in 2026, continuing its multi-year streak of double-digit expansion. This momentum is driven by enterprise investments in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), consulting services, digital transformation initiatives, and application modernisation.
India’s status as the world’s leading destination for global capability centres (GCCs) further amplifies this trend.
With over 1,600 GCCs already operating in the country—many of them innovation centres for Fortune 500 companies—the demand for high-quality IT services, cloud migration expertise, cybersecurity solutions, and digital consulting is rising sharply.
Gartner expects the IT services segment to continue growing at an average annual rate of 12–14% over the next several years, driven by India’s unmatched combination of skilled talent, competitive costs, and strong innovation culture.
Beyond the numbers, Gartner’s forecast paints a larger picture of India’s digital confidence. From UPI and identity stack to cloud-led governance, India has built a foundation of technology adoption at scale.
What we see now is the next phase—India becoming not just a technology consumer, but a creator and exporter of digital services, infrastructure, and AI-driven software.
The spending momentum reflects the vibrancy of India’s digital economy: businesses are modernising, startups are scaling, global investors are diversifying into the Indian market, and consumers are embracing new digital services at an extraordinary pace.
India’s aspirations to build smart cities, expand 5G networks, develop climate-tech solutions, digitalise manufacturing, and lead in AI-based public services all add layers of opportunity for the IT sector.
Gartner’s projection of India surpassing $176 billion in IT spending in 2026 is, therefore, more than a financial milestone—it is a signal that India’s technology sector is entering a mature and globally influential phase.
With rapid data centre growth, rising software investments, and a thriving services ecosystem, India stands poised to shape the next decade of global digital transformation.
In this landscape of innovation and progress, India is building not just a digital economy but a digital future—one that is scalable, inclusive, and globally competitive.
