Indian Firms Trade Up: Demand Rises for Premium Office Spaces

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Anshul, hi and thank you so much for joining me. So my first question as we start off. So India has been the largest office space absorber in recent years in the world.

Now this was a bit of a surprise to me too. I know that we are adding a lot of office capacity, a lot of it is being consumed, but the fact that we are the largest in the world does jump out. So what explains this and what lies behind it?

I guess it's an interesting question because there are two aspects to it, right? One, of course, the demand side in India is kind of shot through the roof. And again, there are two reasons for that.

One is domestic consumption related growth that both Indian companies as well as foreign companies which are servicing the Indian market is sort of on growth path. And the second trend is foreign companies opening their global capability centres and offshoring centres in India to take advantage of the skill base to sort of innovate product and processes across the world. So I think there's a demand side of the story here with those two aspects.

There is another part of the story where your question was, India is the largest absorber and why is that? The second reason also is the demand from some of the biggest countries in the world has gone down post-COVID. So if you think about US, which is the largest office market in the world, post-COVID, it has just not returned to its glory days.

And there's actually in most years post-COVID, US has been on negative absorption, which means that people are kind of giving up more space than they're taking space. And you think about the other massive engine of growth that the world had was China, and China hasn't been growing as fast as the world has been used to. So you have those two guzzlers of space kind of going down.

And you have sort of India, which has really kicked up post-COVID as a result of multiple factors, which has kind of resulted in India being the largest absorber of space at the moment.

And can you give us a sense on what kind of base we're talking about from which we're seeing the kind of growth that we're seeing right now in India versus, let's say, five years ago?

Yeah. So if we think about average absorption, an average gross absorption pre-COVID, right? So if I probably roughly look at 2016 to 2019 numbers, average yearly gross absorption was in the order of, let's say, 50 to 60 million square foot, give or take.

Yeah. And you kind of think about the years 22 to 24, the average yearly absorption has kicked up to 70 to 80 million square foot. In fact, in the year 24 was almost touching 90 million square foot, right?

So you think about that average movement, that's almost about 20 million square foot delta, 20 to 25 million square foot delta from pre-COVID three years to post-COVID three years.

So, and how much would this be a churn? As in, are we saying that 20 million square feet, let's say, is the growth 50 million to 70 or 70 to 80, or is some of it, or what is the usual proportion of proportion of it, which is, let's say, old office space that's coming back into the market?

So, no, so this is the demand side I'm talking about, right? And from a demand perspective, there's another barometer we use, this is net absorption. And net absorption really means what's the net new space that is getting absorbed, right?

So, and that's kind of gross absorption minus the sort of, you know, the churn space as you call it. So the net absorption also has moved up. So pre-COVID, the net absorption was about 33, 34 million square foot.

And the same figure for post-COVID has been about 15 million square foot. So even the net absorption on an average has gone up by 15 to 17 million a year, which represents almost a 30 to 40% increase on net absorption. Now, the reason for that also is that a lot of companies are moving from older space to newer space, right?

So there's definitely an element of that. And then there's an element of sort of expansion. So I think when you look at the gross absorption, net absorption, it kind of clears the picture.

And which parts of India are leading this? So you referred to GCCs earlier. And would GCCs be the largest component of this driver or are they halfway? Where does it stand?

GCCs are now contributing almost a third of Indian demand, so as to say. So last year, I think GCCs tapped off at about 25 odd million square foot of the sort of 80 plus or 85 million odd square foot absorbed. So I'd say just under a third, which is quite significant.

And there were almost 250 new GCCs, which got sort of formed last year. So that's a significant part of demand coming in. And they basically span across sectors, right?

So whether it's sort of banking sector, whether it's healthcare, pharma, whether it's engineering, manufacturing, research, and so on and so forth. So that clearly is significant from a type of work perspective. From if we look at the industry segments, which are growing, whether it's GCC or non-GCC, BFSI, banking and financial sector, has really taken a big lead last year.

Engineering, manufacturing companies, pharma, healthcare has been another major contributor. And the regular IT BPM still make up about sort of, you know, 30 odd percent of the demand. So these are the sectors which are kind of really outshining at the moment.

So you're saying that IT BPM, which is business process management and information technology, the classic way we know it is still a third of the market roughly.

Yeah, so it's probably tapering off a bit. It used to be 32, 33%. It's kind of down to about 27, 28%, but still significant.

Yeah, which, I mean, I'm just trying to correlate it to, let's say, the perception that, let's say, IT industries have slowed down hiring, and some of them are actually in the negative now compared to where they were. And definitely we're not growing, at least in bodies, the way we were growing until about three or four years ago.

For sure, but you're looking at probably, when you look at these figures, you're looking at the top five or top six sort of, you know, big IT companies, right? And but, you know, when we look at our figures, they stretch across different sort of segments and, you know, the sort of smaller players get involved in that as well. So I think there's a small difference there.

And plus, when we say IT, BPM IT also is sort of IT software development and so on and so forth. It's not necessarily just the BPM industry.

I'll come back to office in a second, but you also look at commercial in a broader sense. So can you give us a sense on how, or rather what are the portfolios within commercial leasing that you're, that Cushman is broadly involved in?

So, you know, office obviously is a dominant sector, but, you know, other sectors being retail, industrial, data centres, you know, and we do residential as well. So, you know, but from sort of post COVID perspective, again, you know, retail is one sector that, you know, when people are shopping, the shopping malls in India are in fashion. The quality of shopping centres have kind of really improved.

You know, the number of brands which are entering India, really chasing the story of obviously the growth in aspirant Indian population, the growth in spending, consumer spending in India, generally more discretionary spending has been on the rise on balance over the last sort of four years. So that's kind of all, you know, given way to a retail boom in India. And then, you know, following that is your sort of logistics and industrial sector.

So, you know, I mean, obviously retail, whether it's kind of e-commerce led retail or bricks and mortar retail, you know, the logistics network is obviously there to kind of support. So there's a lot of demand for logistics and warehousing. And as the manufacturing, made in India type campaigns are kind of kicking off, albeit not that rapidly, but there is a definite growth momentum in industrial space as well.

So in your portfolio, in terms of what contributes, how much is office the largest? And if so, roughly by how much?

Yeah, office is the largest. If you think about our transactional business, I'd say 75% comes from offices.

Got it. And is this a global trend or is it more in India?

Yeah, you know, it's more in India at the moment. I think globally industrial logistics have actually done quite well. But are they bigger than offices?

No, but in proportion, are they bigger than what is being contributed in India? Yes.

So, you know, you talked about how in the U.S. the net addition in office space has gone down because obviously people are working from home and hybrids and so on. So whereas in India, we are now, as you said, we are growing and quite furiously. Is there a correlation between, let's say, the rate of office growth that you see and other aspects of economic growth or jobs or any other macroeconomic signals that one can look for or identify?

You know, so generally office sector grows in direct proportion to GDP growth, right? Because GDP growth means the economy in general is doing well. Companies are expanding.

If companies are expanding, they need more office space. So there's a direct correlation. There's but in India, I think two factors matter.

One is, of course, the GDP growth. But second factor also is how much incoming work that India is doing for United States, for Western Europe, for Japan and for some of the other countries which are sort of outsourcing to India, primarily these three regions, I think. And therefore, that propensity of offshoring, whether to your own GCC or offshoring and outsourcing to a third party, I think that is something that's also driving the office sector in India.

So if I were to add those two numbers, the IT and BPM plus GCC, so would it be correct to say that roughly 60-65% of office space absorption is actually driven by companies that are sitting outside India?

No, no, because part of IT, BPM would be GCCs as well, right? So I think if you look at industry sectors, you know, there's kind of, obviously, as I said, pharma, manufacturing, banking, financial, and then pure IT BPMs. And GCC, I would say, actually cuts across everything, right? So there could be a banking GCC or there could be a pure sort of, you know, IT software development GCC. So you can't combine the two.

So if you were to disaggregate that, what would that number be roughly to say that, okay, this is every year, so much of square feet is really taken up by in a form. It's not direct FDI, but it's a version of FDI.

So I'd say, you know, forgetting GCCs for a second, but I think if you look at domestic consumption, so there was a time when about 70 odd percent, and it's hard to define domestic consumption, but let's say 70 odd percent was taken by foreign companies, whether to service the Indian markets or to service overseas markets. And about 30-35% were Indian companies. That ratio has kind of started to balance a bit.

So I think last year, the proportion of Indian companies to proportion of global companies taking more space in India were pretty much in balance.

So you're saying roughly 50-50?

50-50, but it's very hard for me to kind of say how much of that was GCCs versus for local Indian markets. We don't have that data.

Yeah, but I mean, I think what you're saying is there is a significant...

Don't forget that the Indian GCCs as well, so I think it kind of cuts across.

Yeah, but either ways, you're saying that there is a significant and noticeable rise in the Indian companies who are taking more, let's say, organised or top-end office space, whether they're moving or they're expanding or whatever the reason is.

Well, absolutely. And that's been led by the banking sector, banking and financial services sector. So lots of sort of big Indian private banks, some public sector banks.

It's also led by large sort of IT services firms. Although, as you said, they haven't really been growing hammer and tongs in terms of headcount. But a lot of those have taken the opportunity to consolidate because there's a lot of growth before they were dotted in different sort of buildings.

So it's a good chance to consolidate into a better quality sort of office building, upgrade the office building. So a lot of that is happening. And then, of course, the sort of just the consumer goods type companies.

So I'm going to come to the supply side in a moment. But if you were to look at in, let's say, what are the sort of aspirational reasons behind this kind of shift?

I mean, so many of these companies or some of these companies did exist. They were in older buildings. So what's driving their move into newer office spaces where I'm sure they're spending more?

To and I don't know, essentially, what are the aspirational reasons that are driving it as opposed to the data?

So generally, this is a global phenomenon. Right. And I'll first cover that and maybe then I'll come to India.

Right. So I think after COVID, there was a realisation. And even before COVID, I think office was being used to drive sort of, you know, cultural changes.

Office was being used to kind of, you know, come and congregate and be social spaces, more social spaces than kind of, you know, individual kind of spaces. And this revolution, I think, was led by West Coast tech companies back in early last decade. And that was kind of slowly catching momentum.

But what happened post COVID was people stopped coming to office now. Right. Now you've got to bring people back to office.

There were two or three things which became very clear. One, the office needs to be nice, spanking new and a space which invites people in.

Because you wanted people to come in and socialise and feel happy and proud about the office. So I think there was that was one element was actually trying to get people back. Second, there was a massive preference for amenitization.

So what we saw was as people kind of come back into offices, socialisation became very important aspect, not only within the office, but outside of the office. Right. So are there enough amenities for people to kind of, you know, come in and enjoy?

The third was there was a spike in, you know, particularly after the COP 23, I think, which happened a few years ago, there was a big spike in the need and demand for green buildings. Right. So the older buildings were not really sustainable buildings.

So a lot of behaviour changes happened because of multinationals commitment to, you know, to net zero, their net zero targets and real estate portfolios being a large sort of contributor towards carbon. I think there's a lot of boardroom pressure to say, let's move into buildings where we are in the net zero capacity. And then the fourth was wellness.

You know, so air quality, you know, hygiene, you know, it's all kind of led by air conditions in India, air conditions in India, but also, you know, post-COVID the whole, you know, focus on wellness came. And that actually came around the world as well. So I think there were four major aspects which really started the premiumization of office space and the need for premium office space.

And I think as sort of, you know, coming to India, you know, multinationals are already doing it. But as sort of Indian companies started to sort of grow and started to compete in a sector for talent with sort of multinational firms, I think there was a need for a lot of Indian firms to also demonstrate that, you know, we want to compete in the same space as multinationals. And therefore, and one of the key sort of, you know, something which is very visible is office space.

And therefore, the need to sort of be in good quality office space. So we've seen a lot of that happening. And what we're seeing also is while the older buildings, the aged buildings are getting vacated by bigger Indian companies, you know, the smaller Indian companies, which are kind of in sort of, you know, mom and pop type buildings are not going to moving into some of the older buildings.

So, you know, there seems to be a trend of kind of just moving into buildings from Indian companies, good buildings from by Indian companies.

And tell us a little bit about the supply side. I mean, when you sort of look over the subcontinent today, how are you, I mean, how is it divided?

I mean, in terms of organised players versus or larger, large or institutional organised players today versus let's say smaller players, how much of a method is there in the capacity or that's coming in and how much of it is really madness?

Yeah, I think if you, if you again, rewind back maybe five, seven years, maybe 10 years, late last decade, you know, the institutional players were gaining momentum, but they were still possibly in the region of 15, 20 percent of the total supply. Right. Today, the total supply, which we sort of measure, which is your grade A commercial office space, sits at somewhere between 750 million to 800 million square foot.

And the institutional grade amongst them, I'd say, is, you know, inching up to about half of that supply or just under half of that supply. So I'd say that about 300, 300 plus million square foot is now institutional quality. And in terms of sort of, you know, upcoming supply, which is, let's say, between 60 to 70 million square foot a year, I would say that perhaps 60, 65 percent of that is now institutional.

So the market is institutionalising. And when I say institution, I count big, mature Indian developers as institutions as well. So you talk about the foreign institutions or foreign owners like Blackstone, Brookfield, you know, Singaporeans, which is Capital Land, Keppel, Maple Tree, GICs of the world.

Plus a number of sort of large Indian developers, large, mature Indian developers.

So in terms of specific markets, in terms of leasing activity, the numbers suggest or seem to suggest that Bangalore, Mumbai lead the table, followed by Pune and Delhi. So does that stand for new capacity that's coming up and being snapped up? And if so, what are the trends looking like as you look ahead a year or two?

Bangalore is the biggest market, right? And, you know, it's probably now 160, 170 million square foot. And the demand in Bangalore is the largest year on year on year, despite the issues that Bangalore has had.

And therefore, you know, supply will always be dominated in the Bangalore market. I think Mumbai has actually suffered from a very low supply in recent years and recognising the demand, particularly if you look at BKC and some of the more sort of prominent areas, there's hardly been a new building put up or maybe one or two new buildings have been put up, right, across Mumbai. And you probably want quite a bit more.

So we are seeing some of that catch up play happening in Mumbai. But really across the board, I think, you know, you got Pune, Hyderabad, which Pune and Hyderabad, who will remain a large consumer of space, given the nature of, I mean, a lot of GCCs end up going to Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai. So you'll probably see a lot of supply hitting.

Delhi is kind of a little bit more corporate office, but also ITBPM and GCC market. So probably if you think about the top six odd cities, there'll be a decent supply that will be coming in, well distributed, but Bangalore will remain the largest.

And in terms of pipeline, when you look now, maybe three years ahead, are you seeing a similar pipeline as we've seen in the last few years in terms of millions of square feet coming into the market every year?

So at the moment, we are projecting almost 190 million square foot hitting the market between 25, 26 and 27. So that's roughly 60, 65 million square foot a year, right? Don't forget the demand for space. Gross leasing is about 75 to 80 million square foot a year, right?

So in many ways, we have a little bit of a problem because your demands kind of outstripping the supply, which means that people cannot, people will have to remain in the older buildings, right? So while the older buildings are getting obsolete, people will have to remain there and the newer buildings will escalate in their rentals faster because the demand for new buildings actually outstrips the supply of new buildings.

So let me bring in the investor question now. So as you've described it so far, this is clearly a hot and lucrative area to invest in if you were investing in commercial real estate. But I'm sure there are other challenges, policy that are sort of national, subnational, which I'll come to in a moment.

But from a pure investor point of view, and I know that it's mostly institutional investors who play in this, at least at the level you already took some names. How are things looking?

To your point first, I think institutional players should be the only players who are playing in this market. I think it's not an asset class which a retail investor should look at because every time, and there are plenty of examples whether it's Nariman Point or Connaught Place, where the building gets cut up in small pieces and then there's no one who's managing the building or maintaining the building over years and the building deteriorates. So it's a play for institutional investors.

I think if you look at the average rental growth that India is seeing and what we are also forecasting going forward in future is between 4% to 5% per annum. So it's a pretty good hedge for inflation, number one. And number two, I think with sort of cap rates at about 8%, 8.5%, mature buildings kind of will probably do better. Rates are yielding good returns. I think you'll probably see a strong institutional investor interest in this sector as we go forward. Of course, from an overseas investment perspective, there is the dollar appreciation or rupee depreciation risk.

But even after factoring that in, as long as the rentals continue to grow at whatever 5% to 6% per annum and the interest rate, cost of borrowing and cost of sort of, you know, and the yields that you're getting on cost is matches out. I think you've got a pretty good positive momentum from an investment perspective.

And if I were to ask you like a more straight question at this point of time, so would you say that being in the office space business and earning from leasing out that space is more lucrative than residential at this point of time in India?

You know, again, from an investor perspective, I, you know, a retail investor perspective, I would sort of advise while it looks lucrative at whatever 8% versus residential at one and a half, 2%, you know, our advice has always been to stay away from it because, you know, as you're investing, the classical theory is you look at what your exit options are, right? And the exit option for individual investor gets more and more limited. Now, there are some markets like Mumbai, et cetera, which have and Pune, which have had traditionally more activity from individual investor.

And if you're in there, I think you got to watch out for building obsolescence because newer buildings are getting built. You got to really watch out for how do you make sure that the building is maintained, building is leased to the right quality tenant. Rents are collected and they're paid.

So I think there's a lot of risks associated with individual ownership. But if you ignore that and look at sort of, you know, pure return perspective, then yeah, I mean, residential you get probably 2%, 3% return. If you're lucky in office space as an individual investor, you should be able to get 6% to 7%.

But again, our advice is always against that.

And the reason I'm, one of the reasons I'm guessing you give that advice to retail investors to stay away is because of the sheer entry and exit challenges or friction in this space. So tell us about that and what can we do not to bring in retail investors, but to make the space, let's say more easier to play in, so to speak.

You know, I think REITs, you know, I think more and more of office space will get REITed, retail spaces will get REITed. I think that's a great way to have, you know, it's a great yield play because you get nice coupons or nice returns on a quarterly basis. And you, you know, as the sort of stock appreciates over a period of time, capital values, so capital values goes up over a period of time, stocks, REITs stock value will appreciate.

I know they haven't done that well post COVID, but I think they're still, and lately we've seen a good bump in that, but they are a great instrument, I think, to hold. So I would sort of, you know, still advise that that's, that's the place to go for, because owning and, or if you are a large enough an investor and you can own a substantial chunk of the building where you can control the decision-making in the building and making sure that the building is going to be well-maintained, well looked after, leased to a, you know, leased to a, you know, a AAA grade type tenant, and you have an exit plan as a building, I think that's when you go for it.

But to absolute retail investors who are interested in buying 1000, 2000, 5000 square foot doesn't make sense.

And let me come back to the friction, you know, which applies to everyone, whether you're institutional or retail. And what are the areas that we should be looking at now as policy to, let's say, reduce the friction when it comes to, I mean, I guess there, there must be a litany of reasons going from, you know, land acquisition, building permits, you know, management after that. But I'd like to hear your thoughts.

I think most of it really goes back to land and related issues and the use of land and, you know, how the, you know, what kind of permits that exist and what kind of restrictions exist on sale, et cetera. So I think I would say 90% of the issues while buying a building actually goes to the land and the ownership structure. Right.

And ownership structure at times is not really a fault of sort of policy. It's just maybe poorly thought through ownership structure, which then creates a lot of tax inefficiencies in buying. So there's that aspect of it.

And as I said, land related aspects, as I think the digitisation of land records happens and that clarity kind of comes into play. But even when ownership clarity is there, there's a lot of issues around, you know, what's the usage of land and which zone did it fall in and when did it clear and all of that. So I think there's still a lot of work.

I feel that needs to be done in that area.

And do you look at, for example, let's say the disaster resilience or resilience in general against or other in the context of climate and weather when in your newer investments or newer properties that you're dealing with?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think the Chennai floods actually brought that front and centre of the conversation. And I think those were in about 10 years ago or nine or 10 years ago from memory.

You know, when sort of basements of these absolutely spectacular buildings got flooded and the buildings are out of power, et cetera. So today in the building design, I think a lot of thought process is given to resiliency of the building against sort of climate changes. Of course, there's flooding, there is rains, there is air quality.

I think a lot of work's been done on air quality. You know, the sort of temperature and so on and so forth. So, yeah, absolutely.

I'd say in today's building, they're a lot more resilient to, you know, to climate changes.

And which means I'm assuming the capital cost is higher. I mean, I don't know how much, but I'm sure it's higher. So are tenants also willing to pay for that as a premium now saying that, OK, give me a building which I know can resist, let's say, at least these three or four types of disasters?

Yeah, in the same micro market, right, so if let's say Gulf Coast Road in Gurgaon or BKC in Mumbai or CBD in Bangalore, right? In the same micro market, the premium you can command on a brand new good quality building with, you know, with wellness factors, with, you know, good sort of, you know, climate risk management, green building, sustainability amenities. So if you put all of that in a bells and whistles together, you know, in the same micro market, you could command as much as 40 to 50 percent premium on the next building.

So I'm talking about big premiums and I'm talking about the fact that, you know, multinationals and now Indian companies are willing to pay for that space.

Right, and in India, I'm assuming like many other places or in many other places and therefore in India too, most of the market is really people who build to lease and that's the business as opposed to building and selling, right?

Well, I mean, I think India traditionally was a build to sell market, you know, and that started changing with institutionalisation of asset because the reason it was a build to sell market was that's how the buildings got funded or financed because there was no other mode of financing. Bank financing was quite expensive, but that started changing in 2009-10 as institutions started entering the market and this model then returned a much superior return for the investors than of course the build to sell market. So I would say that today I probably majority of the market, I won't say all, but 70-80% of the market today is built to rent market, but there's still pockets where people are doing build to sell, but those are not institutions.

Let me come back to GCCs now. So we've touched upon it as a growth driver. The question I guess is as we look ahead and, you know, I've seen estimates where we've talked about almost two to three GCCs coming up every week in India and even more in some cases.

So that's obviously going to be a big demand driver. So what do we need to ensure that that demand doesn't go down? So obviously talent in the country is one big driver, but the other, as I can sense from what you've been saying also is that place that they come and work in and work together to serve their principals or partners as the case may be.

So what else do we need to do to ensure that this remains healthy, robust, exciting and so on?

You know, I mean, I think obvious things, quality of, I mean, talent you've already covered, but quality of buildings, connectivity, the whole connectivity infrastructure, you know, which is basically our digital and telecom infrastructure. I think there's more work that needs to be done on IP protection in India. You know, people are, because there's a lot of innovation work happening for global products and global processes.

So I think IP protection becomes really important. The states are competing with each other a bit, which is great news in terms of, you know, coming up with favourable policies to attract GCC’s in, which is fantastic. So, yeah, I think those come to mind.

And I think so far we're doing well on those parameters.

Right. And I note that you've not referred much to physical infrastructure.

Look, physical infrastructure is what it is, right? And that's, I think, generally what I find is that's not hugely relevant. And I think I'm being a bit harsh, but, you know, companies do consider that.

But I think the talent, availability and the quality of work and the momentum we have kind of overshadows it. You know, I mean, the problem that we have in India is that physical infrastructure just can't keep up, you know, but companies have come up with more innovative ways not to bring staff in every day. So, you know, a lot of companies do work on hybrid, you know, methods and they do sort of have staggered times and all of that.

But is it a problem, traffic? Oh, absolutely. It is.

Physical infrastructure is a problem. Yes, it is. So far, we haven't seen that deterring people, though.

As I mentioned earlier, even if you look at Bangalore, which is one of the worst sort of, you know, infrastructure, road infrastructures from a traffic perspective in the country. But has that really deterred people going into Bangalore? No, it's still the biggest sort of, you know, office market in India.

And that's largely down to talent. Right. So I think we have lots of positive things happening, which overshadows infrastructure.

But at some stage, infrastructure will catch up. So I would sort of, you know, obviously commend and both commend the governments which are working on it and recommend that we actually expedite it.

And don't take those, that investment coming in for granted. And because it has been coming. Got it. OK, last question.

So just on that note, I mean, you know, so, for example, air quality in Gurgaon, right. And that's, you know, that to me, that to me, what we've seen with our clients is actually a bigger issue than actually road infrastructure in elsewhere in India. Right.

Because, you know, there are people who said, OK, let's not expand further in Gurgaon and kind of, you know, go somewhere else. Because talent is choosing to move out of Gurgaon. Right.

Right. Or Noida. So I, you know, so I think we've got to be very careful around taking anything for granted here, because if the talent starts moving out, because if it's affecting my day to day life, I start moving out, the companies will choose to go elsewhere.

And that's a very important note to sort of head towards conclusion. So my last question, Anshul, so when you walk around looking at offices, so what's your favourite kind of office? Which you feel is not just a good sell to someone else, but which gives you, let's say, a sense of fulfilment or joy and the kind of place you would want to work in.

I think the number of developments in India, which give you a pretty sort of international feel to it. And when I say international, it doesn't really mean, let's be Western or somewhere else in lifestyle. But I think where you have, once you enter the space, the space should be capturing all your five senses effectively.

So, you see an aesthetics, smell, touch, feel, you have multiple things which attract you into offices.

So it's not only how the building is designed and what's your ease of egress, ingress, parking, but also how smoothly it integrates with public infrastructure or public transportation. If there is one in that area, how does it, how does it integrate with amenities? What do I do after hours?

What's there for my wellness, gym, creche, and all designed well, not underpopulated or overpopulated. Right. So I think there's a lot of elements in there.

But for me, if I walk into an office infrastructure, it needs to be complete with all those aspects so that, you know, it just captures my mind and I don't want to run away from it.

And in all of this, what's the number one thing for you personally?

Personally, I think aesthetics and amenities.

Okay.

So it needs to feel, feel good, look good, feel good and needs to be heavily amenitized.

Right. Nice note to end on. Anshul, it was a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Author:   The Core Team

In this week's The Core Report: Weekend Edition, Anshul Jain, from Cushman & Wakefield, talks about how institutional players now dominate nearly half of India’s Grade-A office space, with supply surging in cities like Bangalore and Mumbai.

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Investment