Adani Power just overtook Infosys in market cap. A thermal power producer is now worth more than the flagship of Indian IT. TCS next.
The numbers from CY2026:
🔹 Adani Power: ₹4.77 lakh crore market cap. Up 66% YTD. Hit a 52-week high at ₹252.65 today.
🔹 Infosys: ₹4.69 lakh crore market cap. Down 29% YTD. Hit a 52-week low of ₹1,089 on May 14. FY27 revenue guidance: 1.5% to 3.5%
Now zoom out from one trading session to one decade. Infosys went public in 1993. It was an IPO I saw very closely. It devolved. The IIT Alumni group was the only believer. Alumni Funds like Cheekotel raked in three digit IRRs. And then Vishal Sikka happened – and he wanted to export all the reserves through Citibank to invest in Open AI. The promoters rallied quickly to salvage the situation. Vishal was packed off, the company was saved. My IITB peer Salil Parekh was brought in. He drove it consultant style. Salil had come in from Cap Gemini.
For more than 30 years, Indian IT was THE wealth-creation engine on Dalal Street. It was the cleanest proxy for India’s modern economy. That regime is ending in real time.
The replacement isn’t subtle either:
🔹 India’s peak power demand hit an all-time record of 260.5 GW on May 20, 2026. The previous record set just 24 hours earlier. And this is without passing on the benefits of cheap power to the consumer. Make electricity available at Rs 3 per kWh instead of Rs 11, and demand will explode by an order of magnitude.
🔹 Adani Power is expanding installed capacity from 18.2 GW to 42 GW by FY32. A 131% scale-up. Adani is the byproduct of the Ambani brother dispute. Whilst Mukesh was busy puncturing Reliance Power – Adani grew untouched. He played the Dhirubhai Ambani playbook – Sabka saath, sabka vikas. FBI says that eight chief ministers were on the take to give him contracts. The FBI indictment is the ultimate industry award for Adani. The IIT ecosystem made him the Chief Guest at the 75th Foundation day in preference to Sundar Pichai.
🔹 India’s data centre capacity is going from 1.6 GW today to 8 to 10 GW by 2030. Here Adani is smoking hash. It was ok when my fellow colleague Ravi Sharma was the head of power and the erstwhile head of Alcatel Lucent.
🔹 AI server racks consume 30 to 80 kW each. Traditional cloud racks consume 5 to 10 kW. A single AI rack draws the electricity of an old data centre floor. That is why they are called neoclouds. My IITB junior Sharad Sanghi alone wants to consume the equivalent of the power consumed by all of greater bombay.
Meanwhile Infosys is guiding 1.5% to 3.5% revenue growth in a country whose nominal GDP is compounding at over 10%. The same AI that’s lighting up power demand is eating the billing model that built Infosys. My IIT senior Nandan foolishly thinks his old hammer will work on the new nail called AI. It won’t.
This is the end of the IT services supercycle and the beginning of the energy and infrastructure
