The hunt for listed data-center and AI plays in India has a new darling, and investors are already scouting for the next one. ESDS Software Solution Ltd. has skyrocketed more than 300% since its trading debut on September 4, positioning it among India’s top-performing new listings. This rally could brighten the offering prospects for data-center operators such as Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd., Yotta Data Services Pvt.—which runs India’s largest cluster of Nvidia AI chips—and STT Global Data Centres India Pvt.

The success of ESDS gives more companies in this space a stronger case to tap public markets for funding, said Avinash Gorakshakar, founder of Mumbai-based Avinash Mentor Research. Despite a stock market valued at roughly $5 trillion, investors have limited ways to gain meaningful exposure to cloud computing, data centers, and AI infrastructure—the sectors fueling a global investment frenzy. That scarcity has turned ESDS and suppliers to the data-center ecosystem, including fiber-optic players Sterlite Technologies Ltd. and HFCL Ltd., into proxy bets on the theme. Sterlite shares have soared over 700% this year, while HFCL has more than tripled.

As data centers and related infrastructure rank among India’s few hot themes, investors are pricing in growth for at least the next two years, Gorakshakar noted. According to Kunal Bajaj, an analyst at Choice Institutional Equities, ESDS’s revenue could more than triple in the fiscal year ending March 2027, jumping from 4.7 billion rupees to nearly 23 billion rupees. Bajaj, the only analyst covering the stock, said he plans to revise his 1,550-rupee price target after the company releases its quarterly results on Thursday.

A key driver behind this growth forecast is a $1.25 billion cloud-capacity agreement with SharonAI Holdings Inc. (SHAZ.US). The deal involves deploying 8,000 GPUs at one of the Nasdaq-listed firm’s existing data centers in Australia. Bajaj noted that at the IPO price of 429 rupees, ESDS trades at 2.1 times estimated revenue for the fiscal year ending March 2028, compared with 11 times for peer E2E Networks Ltd. E2E’s shares have tripled this year.

Investor enthusiasm was evident even before the listing began. ESDS’s roughly $80 million IPO was subscribed 136 times; data shows its post-debut surge ranks among the strongest one-month performances for Indian IPOs raising at least $20 million.