What Does Sify Do? Data Centers, Network and Cloud in India

Sify Technologies Limited (Nasdaq: SIFY) is a Chennai-based Indian company that sells three things to businesses: space and power in data-center halls, a national network that reaches more than 1,700 towns and cities, and digital services such as cloud, security and managed infrastructure. It opened India's first commercial data center in Vashi in 2000. It now runs 14 concurrently maintainable data centers in Mumbai, Noida, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kolkata. At 31 March 2026 it had built 192.36 MW and had 128.40 MW operational. By 30 September 2026 operational capacity had risen to 136 MW, and its data-center subsidiary had another 113 MW already contracted and scheduled for delivery. Data-center services are now almost level with the network on revenue, and they produce most of the segment profit. The catch: Sify is still more than a data-center landlord, one unnamed customer accounted for more than a tenth of group revenue last year, and net debt has climbed as it builds the next halls.

AI DATA CENTERS · Data as at 30 Sep 2026 · Next update: after Sify's Q3 FY 2026-27 results (quarter ending 31 December 2026; date not yet announced in its SEC filings)
Affects: AI Data Centers · India · Networks

Sify sits on the AI Data Centers layer with the landlords and hosts that collect rent on powered halls, next to GDS in China, NEXTDC in Australia, Keppel DC REIT and Nxera in South-east Asia, and global colocation groups such as Equinix and Digital Realty. It is an Indian integrated ICT company, not a pure landlord: the same group sells the hall, the circuit that reaches it, and the cloud and security wrapped around it. Read What Is an AI Data Center? and Hyperscale vs Colocation Data Centers first if the terms are new.

In short: Sify earns money in three lines. Network services still bring in the largest slice of quarterly revenue: 43% in the quarter to 30 September 2026. Data-center services were 37% of that quarter's revenue and 71.1% of segment profit before central costs (our arithmetic). Digital services — cloud, security, managed networks and applications — were 20%. Colocation here means renting a rack or a cage and billing for space plus the power those racks use. The stuck step is delivering the next halls: 136 MW is operational, and another 113 MW is contracted and scheduled for delivery. If that pipeline is handed over, live plus contracted capacity would be 249 MW (our arithmetic). Sify does not say how much of the live capacity is already filled, or how much of it is reserved for AI rather than ordinary enterprise workloads.

Education only, not advice to buy or sell any security. Figures are from Sify's US SEC filings: results for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, furnished on 28 October 2026; the annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended 31 March 2026, filed on 26 June 2026; results for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, furnished on 16 July 2026; results for the year ended 31 March 2026, furnished on 13 April 2026; and the 17 October 2025 report on its data-center subsidiary's draft prospectus. Sify reports in Indian rupees under IFRS. Its 2026 annual report translates dollars at the Reserve Bank of India Mumbai reference rate on 31 March 2026, 94.6543 rupees to one US dollar. Where we convert a rupee figure ourselves we use that rate and label it as our arithmetic.

Numbers that matter

Live data-center capacity

136 MW

Operational at 30 September 2026, up from 128.40 MW operational at 31 March 2026

Growing

Still to deliver

113 MW

Contracted capacity at the data-center subsidiary, scheduled for delivery · 30 Sep 2026

Bind

Built vs operational

192.36 / 128.40 MW

Total built capacity against operational capacity across 14 data centers · 31 Mar 2026

Spare

Q2 FY27 revenue

₹13,798m

Network 43%, data centers 37%, digital 20%; profit ₹40m · quarter to 30 Sep 2026

Mixed

Data-center segment result

₹2,301m

On ₹5,172m of data-center revenue in the September quarter, before central depreciation and interest

Engine

Net debt

₹45,331m

Up from ₹31,395m at 31 March 2026; cash ₹5,868m · 30 Sep 2026

Levered

Status chips are Second Order's read. Capacity, revenue, segment profit, cash and net debt are Sify's own figures. The 7.6 MW rise in operational capacity between 31 March and 30 September 2026 is our arithmetic (136 − 128.40).

What does Sify actually do?

Sell the circuit. Rent the hall. Wrap cloud and security around both. Collect the bill in rupees from Indian enterprises, and from a smaller set of foreign customers.

Network first, historically. Halls now where the profit sits. The next megawatts still to be handed over.

1. It runs a national network and the doors into India. Sify's network reaches more than 1,700 towns and cities, with more than 3,400 points of presence and more than 125,000 enterprise endpoints, figures given in its 2026 annual report. It had 1,264 fiber nodes at 30 September 2026, 6% more than a year earlier. The network is a mix of leased capacity, leased fiber and owned fiber, bought from several operators so a failed route can be rerouted. Sify has seven international points of presence and sells dedicated internet access, India-in MPLS and wholesale voice as well as domestic circuits. It is part of the Europe India Gateway sub-consortium between London and Mumbai, and it lands the MENA and GBI cable systems at its open cable landing station in Versova, Mumbai. In the September 2026 quarter it said it had received provisional clearance from India's Department of Telecom for two upcoming cable landing stations, and that it had finished its Hyderabad–Chennai national long-distance corridor.
2. It rents concurrently maintainable data-center halls. Customers can bring their own rack-mountable servers and take shared racks, full racks or secure cages, and buy managed services on top: storage and backup, monitoring, load balancing, shared firewalls, and remote or smart hands. Revenue is a fixed charge for the racks used, plus usage revenue based on the power those racks consume. Sify pioneered the business in India with a commercial hall in Vashi in 2000. Power is the main input: it buys electricity from state electricity boards and has also invested in renewable generation. Its Rabale campus, in Navi Mumbai, has an on-site substation and hosts a private internet exchange, AMS-IX, set up with Amsterdam Internet Exchange. Its Noida data center is, Sify says, among the few green data centers in India.
3. It is building more halls, including for AI-scale customers. At 31 March 2026 Sify had built 192.36 MW and had 128.40 MW operational across the 14 data centers. In the year to that date the data-center subsidiary sold 17 MW, taking cumulative sold capacity to 129 MW, and had contracted a further 81 MW for delivery in the 2026-27 fiscal year. In the June 2026 quarter the subsidiary sold another 5 MW. By 30 September 2026 operational capacity was 136 MW and contracted capacity scheduled for delivery was 113 MW. With its year-end results Sify said a global hyperscaler had contracted for their largest single-building liquid-cooled capacity in the Indian subcontinent, and that another had signed for a first core of capacity in India. In the September quarter it said it had signed a major capacity deal with a global leader in AI cloud compute. It does not name those customers. It is also investing in edge data centers; by March 2026 the first was ready for customers.
4. It sells digital services on top of the halls and the network. This line includes a network operations center with more than 500 associates, DDoS protection, managed SD-WAN, enterprise cloud (including AI and machine-learning workloads), multi-cloud management, security operations, and applications such as online examinations and e-learning. Sify also implements SAP, Microsoft and Oracle environments. Many of these products are sold together with a circuit or a rack.
5. It does this mainly in India, from Chennai. The principal office is at Tidel Park in Taramani, Chennai. In the year to March 2026, 93% of revenue came from India and 7% from the rest of the world. It has sales teams in India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, and says it has more than 10,000 customers to date. It had 4,331 employees at 31 March 2026, substantially all of them based in India, down slightly from 4,406 a year earlier.

The city counts and the built and operational megawatts are from Sify's 2026 annual report. The 136 MW operational and 113 MW contracted figures are from the 28 October 2026 results release and are not broken down by city. Adding the two September figures gives 249 MW if every contracted megawatt is delivered on top of the halls already live (our arithmetic). Sify does not publish an updated built-capacity figure at 30 September 2026, so we cannot say how much spare shell sits between built and operational at that later date.

In the year to March 2026, data-center services revenue was ₹17,519 million, or 39% of the ₹44,877 million group total, up from ₹14,196 million the year before. Network services were ₹17,634 million (39%) and digital services ₹9,724 million (22%). Data-center revenue rose ₹3,323 million, which Sify attributed to new contracts and higher capacity utilization by existing customers.

How does Sify make money?

Three lines, with very different margins. The network is still the largest slice of quarterly sales. The halls now produce most of the segment profit. Digital services fill out the offer and, in the first half of this fiscal year, lost money at the segment level.

• Network services. Sify sells internet access, MPLS virtual private networks, long-distance capacity, last-mile connectivity, data-center interconnects and direct links into public clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle. Some of this is a fixed pipe for a fixed term; wholesale voice is billed on metered call units. In the September 2026 quarter, network services brought in ₹5,879 million from external customers, 42.6% of group revenue (our arithmetic; Sify rounds the mix to 43%), with a segment result of ₹915 million. For the year to March 2026, network revenue was ₹17,634 million, up ₹1,853 million. An annual licence fee of 8% of adjusted gross revenue is levied on IP-VPN and voice services under Sify's Unified Licence.
• Data-center colocation and power. The customer pays for space and for the electricity the racks draw. In the September 2026 quarter this line brought in ₹5,172 million, 37.5% of group revenue (our arithmetic; Sify rounds it to 37%), with a segment result of ₹2,301 million. That is 44.5% of data-center revenue and 71.1% of the three lines' combined segment result, before central costs (both our arithmetic). For the first half of the fiscal year, data-center revenue was ₹10,454 million and the segment result ₹4,595 million. Cost of sales in this line is mainly electrical power and any hardware sold with the service.
• Digital services. Cloud instances, security monitoring, managed networks and applications are usually sold for a fixed period, sometimes on a time-and-materials basis, and sometimes as turnkey projects. In the September quarter this line brought in ₹2,747 million, with a segment result of only ₹19 million. In the first half, digital services revenue was ₹5,059 million and the segment result was a loss of ₹116 million. For the full year to March 2026, digital revenue fell ₹186 million to ₹9,724 million: application integration and network managed services declined, partly offset by growth in cloud and managed services.
• Who gets paid, and who pays. Sify and its data-center subsidiary, Sify Infinit Spaces Limited, collect the rent, the power pass-through, the circuit fees and the digital-service fees. State electricity boards are paid for power. Telecommunications operators are paid for leased capacity. Banks and other lenders are paid interest: finance expense was ₹1,143 million in the September quarter, 8.3% of revenue and 36.5% of adjusted EBITDA (our arithmetic). After convertible debentures turned into shares on 7 February 2026, Kotak Special Situations Fund and Kotak Data Centre Fund held about 5.36% and 6.19% of the subsidiary, leaving Sify with about 88.45%. Who pays. Enterprise and government customers in India, plus a smaller overseas book. One unnamed customer in the data-center and network segment contributed ₹8,809 million in the year to March 2026, 19.6% of group revenue (our arithmetic). Sify does not name that customer.

In the September 2026 quarter, group revenue was ₹13,798 million, up 31% from ₹10,533 million a year earlier. Operating profit was ₹1,184 million and profit for the period ₹40 million, after a ₹275 million loss a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was ₹3,131 million, up 33%. Depreciation was ₹2,012 million and interest on borrowings and leases ₹1,142 million: the halls can show a healthy segment result and still leave only a thin profit once buildings and debt are counted. Profit was 0.29% of revenue (our arithmetic).

In the first half, revenue was ₹26,150 million and profit ₹105 million, against a ₹664 million loss a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was ₹6,136 million. Capex was ₹6,708 million in the June quarter and ₹8,573 million in the September quarter, ₹15,281 million together (our arithmetic). That is already more than the ₹13,282 million of capex cited in the 13 April 2026 results release for the whole previous fiscal year, and more than the ₹11,956 million (US$126.31 million) of capital expenditure recorded in the 2026 annual report. We do not reconcile those two full-year figures. At 31 March 2026 the annual report also recorded capital commitments of about ₹22,468 million (US$237.37 million) and capital work in progress of ₹7,587 million.

Money sticks once a hall is live and a customer is drawing power under a signed contract, and once a circuit is installed and billed. Before that, Sify carries the land, the build, the interest and the commitments. That is why the 113 MW still scheduled for delivery matters as much as the 136 MW already running.

What limits it?

Delivery first. Debt second. Customer concentration third.

1. A large pipeline is signed but not yet live. Operational capacity was 136 MW at 30 September 2026. Another 113 MW was contracted and scheduled for delivery. Live halls rose 7.6 MW in six months (our arithmetic). At 31 March 2026, only 66.7% of built capacity was operational (our arithmetic: 128.40 ÷ 192.36). That is a measure of how much of the built plant was running, not a customer occupancy rate: Sify does not publish occupancy, utilisation or rent per kilowatt in these filings. The year-end results had pointed to 81 MW contracted for delivery in FY 2026-27; by September the contracted-to-deliver figure was 113 MW, so more capacity was signed than that earlier slate (the filings do not walk through the increase).
2. Net debt has risen with the build. At 30 September 2026 Sify reported equity of ₹19,195 million, long-term borrowings of ₹36,109 million, short-term borrowings of ₹18,572 million, cash and bank balances of ₹5,868 million and loan-linked deposits of ₹3,482 million, for net debt of ₹45,331 million. Net debt was ₹31,395 million at 31 March 2026 and ₹28,736 million a year earlier. The six-month increase is ₹13,936 million (our arithmetic), and net debt is 2.36 times equity (our arithmetic). Interest is already large relative to the profit the group keeps.
3. One customer is a large share of the book. Revenue of ₹8,809 million from a single unnamed customer in the data-center and network segment was more than 10% of group revenue in the year to March 2026, 19.6% on our arithmetic. A non-renewal, a delay or a repricing at that account would move the group numbers. Sify does not say whether that customer is a hyperscaler, a cloud firm or an Indian enterprise.
4. The halls are not yet most of the revenue. Data centers were 37% of September-quarter revenue and 39% of last year's revenue. The network is still the larger quarterly sales line. Digital services remain the smallest line and made almost no segment profit in the September quarter. A reader who treats Sify as a pure data-center stock is reading only part of the company.
5. The planned listing of the data-center subsidiary is not done. Sify Infinit Spaces Limited filed a draft red herring prospectus on 17 October 2025 with SEBI, BSE and the National Stock Exchange of India, for a fresh issue of up to ₹25,000 million and an offer for sale of up to ₹12,000 million. Convertible debentures held by two Kotak funds were turned into SISL shares on 7 February 2026. With the 13 April 2026 results, Sify said it had received SEBI's final observations and would time the issue to the market. The September 2026 results release does not update that timetable, and the filings we used do not give a listing date or an issue price.
6. A controlling shareholder holds the vote. Entities affiliated with Raju Vegesna, the chief executive, chairman and managing director, beneficially owned about 83.78% of Sify's equity shares at 31 March 2026, including 67.98% held by Ramanand Core Investment Company Private Limited. Each American depositary share represents six equity shares, a ratio changed on 4 October 2024 so that the listing could meet Nasdaq's minimum bid-price rule. Sify is a controlled company.
7. Power, licences and land can still bind a hall. Sify buys power from state electricity boards and flags a continuous supply, and its carbon footprint, as dependencies; it has also taken small stakes in solar companies. Its network depends on a Unified Licence signed on 2 June 2014, valid for 20 years. Several data-center sites sit on land allotted by industrial development authorities. The filings do not say which future halls are waiting on a grid connection.

Where the filings are silent we say so. Sify does not name its data-center customers, publish rent per kilowatt, give a customer occupancy rate, say how much of the 136 MW is used for AI rather than ordinary enterprise loads, update built capacity at 30 September 2026, break operational megawatts down by city, set a date for the SISL listing, or announce a date for its third-quarter FY 2026-27 results. We do not estimate those.

Who else does this?

Roles, not a league table.

What separates Sify is that the hall is only one of three bills it sends. Most companies on this layer either own campuses and collect rent, or convert mining power into AI leases. Sify grew up as an Indian internet and network company — it listed American depositary shares in 1999, when it was still Satyam Infoway — and added data centers as a second engine. Its annual report lists Reliance Jio, Tata Communications and Bharti as network competitors, and CtrlS, STT, Nxtra and NetMagic as data-center competitors. See Data Center Leases Explained and How Much Power Does an AI Data Center Use? for the contract and the electricity bill behind a hall.

What would change this view?

The read on the model weakens if:

• The 113 MW scheduled for delivery is handed over late, or is handed over without the customers that were meant to fill it.
• Net debt keeps rising faster than data-center segment profit, so that interest absorbs most of what the halls earn.
• The unnamed customer that was 19.6% of FY26 revenue (our arithmetic) does not renew, delays a build or renegotiates price.
• The SISL offering is launched and lists, which would fund part of the pipeline and make the halls a separately quoted business; or the offering is withdrawn or delayed again.
• A second large AI or hyperscale contract is disclosed with a megawatt figure and a delivery date, which would show the September-quarter AI-cloud signing can be repeated.
• Sify starts reporting occupancy, rent per kilowatt or a split of live megawatts between AI and enterprise customers.

The read stays intact while operational capacity keeps rising toward the contracted pipeline, data-center services remain the main source of segment profit, and the group can fund the build without a sharp further rise in net debt relative to what the halls earn.

Practical takeaways

• Sify is a Chennai-based Indian ICT company: 14 data centers, a national network and a digital-services layer, with American depositary shares traded as SIFY.
• At 30 September 2026 it had 136 MW of operational data-center capacity and another 113 MW contracted and scheduled for delivery. At 31 March 2026 it had built 192.36 MW and had 128.40 MW running.
• Data centers were 37% of September-quarter revenue but 71.1% of segment profit before central costs (our arithmetic). The network is still the larger sales line.
• Profit for that quarter was only ₹40 million, because depreciation and interest are large; net debt was ₹45,331 million, 2.36 times equity (our arithmetic).
• The planned listing of Sify Infinit Spaces Limited has SEBI's observations and no timetable in the later filings we used. Signing and handing over the next halls, and the concentration of revenue in one unnamed customer, are the steps to watch.

FAQ

What does Sify do?
Sify Technologies Limited is a Chennai-based Indian ICT company. It sells network connectivity across more than 1,700 towns and cities, rents space and power in 14 data centers, and offers digital services such as cloud, security and managed infrastructure. American depositary shares trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker SIFY, with each ADS representing six equity shares.

How much data center capacity does Sify have?
At 30 September 2026 Sify said operational capacity stood at 136 MW, and that its data-center subsidiary had 113 MW of contracted capacity scheduled for delivery. At 31 March 2026, the last date for which it published both figures, it had built 192.36 MW and had 128.40 MW operational across the 14 data centers.

What is Sify Infinit Spaces?
Sify Infinit Spaces Limited, or SISL, is Sify's data-center subsidiary. It filed a draft red herring prospectus on 17 October 2025 for a proposed Indian listing of up to ₹25,000 million of new shares and an offer for sale of up to ₹12,000 million. After converting Kotak-held convertible debentures on 7 February 2026, Sify held about 88.45% of SISL. In April 2026 Sify said SEBI had given final observations on the draft and that it would time the issue to the market. The later filings we used do not name a listing date.

Is Sify only a data center company?
No. Data-center services were 37% of revenue in the September 2026 quarter and 39% in the year to March 2026. Network services were 43% and 39% in those same periods, and digital services the rest. Data centers now contribute most of the segment profit, but the group still sells more network than halls.

Who owns Sify?
Entities affiliated with Raju Vegesna, the chief executive, chairman and managing director, beneficially owned about 83.78% of the equity shares at 31 March 2026. Ramanand Core Investment Company Private Limited, which he controls, held 67.98%.

Is Sify stock a good investment?
We do not make buy or sell calls, and nothing here is a recommendation. We can tell you what it owns, who pays it and which numbers would change the picture. The decision is yours.

Keep reading on the map

• The layers: AI Data Centers · Neoclouds · Hyperscalers
• The terms: What Is an AI Data Center? · Hyperscale vs Colocation Data Centers · Data Center Leases Explained · Data Center Financing Explained · GPU Cloud Providers · Power Purchase Agreements Explained
• Other halls businesses: What Does GDS Do? · What Does NEXTDC Do? · What Does Keppel DC REIT Do? · What Does Nxera Do? · What Does Equinix Do? · What Does Digital Realty Do?
• The power: How Much Power Does an AI Data Center Use? · Where Are AI Data Centers Located? · Contracted Power Explained

For how a long power contract sits underneath a hall, read What Is a Power Purchase Agreement? How AI Data Centers Lock In Power. This page stays the free Stack read of the Sify model.

Sean

Writes Second Order by TKN — a plain-English map of AI infrastructure. Who gets paid, where money sticks, which step is stuck. Not investment advice.

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How we check this

Figures come from Sify's filings with the US SEC listed below: its results for the quarter ended 30 September 2026 (furnished 28 October 2026), its annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended 31 March 2026 (filed 26 June 2026), its results for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 (furnished 16 July 2026), its results for the year ended 31 March 2026 (furnished 13 April 2026) and its 17 October 2025 report on the SISL draft prospectus. Where we work something out ourselves, the arithmetic is shown in full and labelled. Sify does not name its data-center customers, publish rent or occupancy, or set a date for the SISL listing or for its next quarterly results, so we do not estimate those. Social media posts and press reports are not used.

Last reviewed: 8 Nov 2026 · Next review: after Sify's Q3 FY 2026-27 results (quarter ending 31 December 2026; date not yet announced in its SEC filings)
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References

1. Sify Technologies Limited, Sify reports Consolidated Financial Results for Q2 FY 2026-27 (Form 6-K, Exhibit 99.1) (company, SEC exhibit 99.1), 28 Oct 2026 — Q2 FY27 revenue, adjusted EBITDA, profit, capex, segment split, 136 MW operational capacity, 113 MW contracted for delivery, 1,264 fiber nodes, cash, equity, borrowings and net debt
2. Sify Technologies Limited, Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026 (company, SEC filing), 26 Jun 2026 — Business lines, 14 data centers and city list, 192.36 MW built and 128.40 MW operational, FY26 revenue mix, one customer at more than 10% of revenue, SISL IPO and CCD conversion, ownership, employees, network and cable-landing assets, capital expenditure and commitments
3. Sify Technologies Limited, Sify reports Consolidated Financial Results for Q1 FY 2026-27 (Form 6-K, Exhibit 99.1) (company, SEC exhibit 99.1), 16 Jul 2026 — Q1 FY27 revenue split, 5 MW of data-center capacity sold in the quarter, capex of 6,708 million rupees and cash of 4,597 million rupees
4. Sify Technologies Limited, Sify reports Consolidated Financial Results for FY 2025-26 (Form 6-K, Exhibit 99.1) (company, SEC exhibit 99.1), 13 Apr 2026 — FY26 revenue split and segment growth, 17 MW sold in the year and 129 MW sold capacity cumulative, 81 MW contracted for delivery in FY27, year capex, SEBI observations on the SISL draft prospectus, hyperscaler liquid-cooled contract
5. Sify Technologies Limited, Report of Foreign Private Issuer: Sify Infinit Spaces draft red herring prospectus (Form 6-K) (company, SEC filing), 17 Oct 2025 — SISL publicly filed a draft red herring prospectus with SEBI, BSE and NSE for a proposed IPO of up to 25,000 million rupees of new shares and an offer for sale of up to 12,000 million rupees