Commercial real estate entity RMZ Corp said players like UPS Technologies, Haleon, Planview APAC, Booking Holding and Nielsen are among players who have leased over 5 million sq ft to set up their Global Capabilities Centre in India in a span of 18 months.
The company also said it is advanced stages to enter the Delhi-NCR with large size commercial project to expand its footprint. “India continues to be one of the most favourable destinations for GCC with availability of talent. The GCC market has grown at a steady pace and over 500 GCC are expected to be added in India in the coming years,” Thirumal Govindraj, Senior Managing Director, Executive Board, RMZ Corp told FE.
He said the company has leased over 5 mn sq ft across its portfolio, added 38 new tenants for the GCC business. Govindraj said most GCC initially take up about 100,000-150,000 sq ft of space to start with and depending on their business prospects they could go from half a million to 1 million sq ft of space.
In NCR, the company is currently focusing only on Gurgaon, and plans to move to other markets in Northern region after it establishes itself here.
“We are looking to acquire a large land parcel in Gurgaon to develop around 4 -4.5 million sq ft of office space. With many under-construction projects, we plan to make 5-6 million sq ft operational this financial year,” he said. Currently, RMZ has two equal partnerships with CPPIB Investments and Mitsui Fudosan, while a third 50:50 JV of equity investment worth $0.5 billion is being forged in the hospitality space where the company is currently in the process of finalizing projects involving 1,200 keys.
RMZ and CPPIB already have a joint venture formed in April 2021, when CPPIB put in around $210 million for development of about 10.4 million sq ft of commercial office space in Hyderabad and Chennai In March 2022, RMZ and CPPIB formed a 50:50 JV where the latter invested around $355 million. The joint venture formed to construct and acquire commercial office space in India’s major cities. RMZ has presence in six cities with 19 projects spread across 70 million sq ft Asset Under Management.
The company said that it has a total 34.5 million sq ft of asset under construction. The company said it plans to grow its asset portfolio to 350 million sq ft by 2032.
Govindraj said that the company plans to take its footprint nationwide and is breaking ground in six cities. RMZ is focusing on six top cities in India – Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai and NCR region. “We used to be Bengaluru-centred, but currently if you take our footprint, Hyderabad has got the largest footprint for us, apart from Bengaluru,” he said.
RMZ has completed 4 marquee greenfield acquisitions in key metros Mumbai and Pune in Western region, whereon it anticipates raising10 mn sq ft. This will increase our AUM by $3bn in current projects. Asked if logistics and warehousing was also an area of opportunity, Govindraj said the company still is the process of firming up its plans.
On entering the data centre business, “It is going to be the next big growth with AI becoming mainstream. We will look to create infrastructure needed for data centres”. On RERA’s proposal to bring commercial real estate under its ambit, Govindraj said, “RERA covers individual buyers. But in our case, we create a building and lease it to retail investors. There is no governance needed in this case”.