India cannot afford the scale of investment in data centres, if power bills go up, it will become a hot political issue: Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu

India must adopt a more energy-efficient approach to AI, or the country risks political and economic fallout, Zoho Corp’s founder and Chief Scientist Sridhar Vembu warned, highlighting the strain massive data centres could place on the nation’s power infrastructure.

“Massive new data centers are required. How many power stations are we going to build to supply these data centers? We are energy sufficient now, but if we increase energy requirements by 10x, maybe 50x due to AI, can we handle it? These are natural questions to ask,” Vembu said in an interview with Moneycontrol , stressing the need for sustainable AI solutions.

He drew parallels with the U.S., where AI investment has soared into the trillions of dollars but raised concerns about rising electricity costs and limited produ