Gulf Oil sees small but growing data centre cooling market

Gulf Oil Lubricants India is developing specialised liquid cooling fluids for server thermal management as it looks to tap into the emerging data centre opportunity in India.Manish Gangwal, Whole-time Director and CFO, said the company has developed two products for liquid cooling and is currently in discussions with service providers and data centre operators to begin proof of concept (POC) trials in the domestic market..

“Having said that, we believe that it’s a growing segment. It is a good to have product for future. But as of now, the opportunity and the size is very small and not even meaningful to mention,” he said.
Even long-term potential remains limited relative to its core lubricants business: “The total addressable market will still be less than 1% or maybe around 1 to 2% of the total lubricant market size.”

The real rationale, he explained, is technological rather than immediate profitability. As computing power rises, traditional cooling becomes insufficient. “Many of those high-end data centres, big data centres, with the speed of computing going up, they will need liquid cooling,” he said.Also Read: KEI sees ₹25,000 crore opportunity for cable industry on data centre push

Gulf Oil Lubricants India has a market capitalisation of around ₹5,343.85 crore. The stock has declined nearly 6% over the past year.

The company is currently seeking partners and certifications in India and expects progress soon. On timelines, Gangwal said, “By the time the race to data centre starts in India, we should be ready with our POC done and ready with the market fit product,” adding the company is looking for something decisive by the end of the calendar year.