Yotta flips IPO strategy, to tap Indian markets before Nasdaq

The Mumbai-based company, which has campuses in Navi Mumbai, Noida and GIFT City, had secured approvals to list its US parent entity following a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The company will now prioritize an India initial public offering (IPO) amid rising domestic investor appetite for digital infrastructure and AI-linked assets, said Sunil Gupta, chief executive officer of Yotta. He said Yotta retains the option to raise capital overseas later.

“Our current plan is to raise capital in India first. The structure allows us to keep the US option open, it’s a question of sequencing,” Gupta said in an interview withMint. “If everything goes well, next financial year is when we could be coming to the market in India.”

Gupta said the company had received all regulatory approvals for aNasdaq listing by late 2025 but chose to prioritize the Indian markets given its sovereign positioning, India-centric operations and strong response from domestic investors during pre-IPO fundraising discussions.

“Indian investors are already factoring India risk when they invest. For overseas investors, India is still an external risk,” he said. “Given the response we are seeing in India from family offices, high-net-worth individuals and funds, we believe we may be able to raise sufficient equity domestically to fund our near-term GPU, cloud and data centre expansion.”

Yotta’s parent company, Nidar Infrastructure, said it planned to list on the Nasdaq through a merger with Cartica Acquisition Corp, valuing the business at $2.75 billion pre-transaction, according to regulatory filings. The combined entity was expected to list under the tickers YTTA and YTTAW.

Scale first

However, Nidar Infrastructure said in a 7 January filing that it had elected not to proceed with the business combination outlined in the Form F-4 registration statement. Gupta said the SPAC transaction is now off the table and that any future US listing would require a fresh process.

Gupta said an India-first listing would allow Yotta to build scale and valuation before tapping the overseas markets.

“Once we are listed in India, we can approach overseas markets with much higher strength,” he said.

Market participants saidIndia’s public markets are warming to AI-adjacent and data centre listings, reflecting a broader shift in investor sentiment.

“India’s capital market investors are showing strong appetite for AI-adjacent public listings, particularly across AI software, data centres, cloud services and application-layer technology,” said Shivam Bajaj, founder and chief executive officer of Avener Capital.

The current listed universe offers limited pure-play AI exposure, leaving investors with few direct avenues to participate in the theme, Bajaj said.

“For AI builders, a key question will be how public market investors ultimately value the business, whether as a data centre-led infrastructure platform with stable cash flows or as a strategic AI company with technology-driven upside,” he added, pointing to a healthy pipeline of upcoming data centre IPOs.

Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd has received the market regulator’s approval for a ₹3,700 crore IPO, while Hyderabad-based CtrlS Datacenters is exploring a public listing to fund its expansion to over 1 gigawatt of capacity within four years.

AI funding

Gupta called for a sharp increase in government funding for the IndiaAI Mission in the upcoming FY27 budget.

“The current allocation of about ₹11,000 crore over five years is too small for a country like India. The IndiaAI Mission budget should be raised to at least ₹50,000 crore,” he said. The government allocated ₹2,000 crore forthe IndiaAI Mission in the FY26 budget, up from ₹173 crore in the previous year.

Yotta’s revenue more than doubled to an estimated $49.2 million in FY24 from $22 million in FY23, while its net loss narrowed marginally to $52.8 million. The company has projected revenue of $156 million in FY25, alongside a deeper net loss of $113.4 million as it accelerates capital expenditure.

According to Mordor Intelligence, India’s data centre and AI infrastructure market is expected to grow from about $11.76 billion in early 2026 to $25.07 billion by 2031, driven by cloud adoption, data localization requirements and AI workloads.

India’s data centre and AI infrastructure market is projected to more than double to $25.1 billion by 2031 from $11.8 billion in 2026.

At its flagship Panvel campus near Navi Mumbai, Yotta has expanded its land bank from an initial 20 acres to about 70 acres, enabling the development of up to 22 data centre buildings, Gupta said. He declined to disclose a completion timeline, saying construction will be driven by customer contracts and demand visibility.

“We won’t build blindly. The pace depends entirely on the deals we win,” he said.

Once fully built, the Panvel campus alone will have power feasibility of up to 2 GW, supported by land, fibre and grid connectivity.

Capacity projections

India’s data centre capacity projections may now be conservative, Gupta added.

“Without AI, we were projecting around 3 GW by 2028-2030 overall. With AI demand, India could reach 6 to 7 GW in the same period.”

Yotta’s revenue mix has shifted sharply toward higher layers of the stack. Co-location now contributes about 20% of revenue, sovereign cloud and managed services account for roughly 30%, while GPU and AI services make up 40-50%.

To be sure, the economics vary significantly across layers. Building a traditional co-location facility typically requires $5-6 million per megawatt of IT load. Fully GPU-based AI infrastructure can require investments of up to $40 million per megawatt.

“Capex is much higher, but returns are also significantly higher,” Gupta said.

The investment for Yotta’s 22-building plan can go up to $10 billion, he said.

Despite strong demand, access to risk capital remains the biggest constraint for India’s AI infrastructure ecosystem, he added.