Walk through Hyderabad’s Madhapur on any weekday morning, and the glass towers lining the HITEC City stretch tell a story numbers alone cannot. The cafeterias are full. The parking lots are packed by 8 AM. Security badges flash logos of American banks, European insurers, and technology firms headquartered thousands of miles away.
Hyderabad has, over the past few years, become one of the most sought-after cities in the world for global companies looking to build large, skilled teams in India, and landlords are beginning to charge accordingly.
Rents are rising, and rising fast
The latest office market data from Cushman & Wakefield shows that average rents in Hyderabad’s Grade A offices rose 11.6% over the past year, reaching Rs 92.23 per square foot per month in the first quarter of 2026. Quarter-on-quarter, that is another 3.4% increase. In Madhapur, which covers the HITEC City cluster, including Kondapur and Raidurg, rents are even higher, at Rs 105.5 per square foot per month.
The GCC effect
So what is driving this? A large part of the answer lies in what the industry calls Global Capability Centres, or GCCs, the Indian offices of multinational companies that handle everything from technology and analytics to finance, legal, and customer operations for their parent firms abroad.
In the first quarter of 2026 alone, GCCs accounted for 26% of all office space leased in Hyderabad. Multinational companies as a whole took up 88% of leasing activity. These are not small teams renting a floor or two.
The biggest deal of the quarter was WeWork taking 404,000 square feet at Phoenix H10 T3 in Madhapur. Charles Schwab, the American financial services giant, leased 345,430 square feet at Phoenix Equinox T2.
Madhapur has almost no space left
The deeper issue is that demand has outpaced supply, particularly in the areas that global companies most want to be in. Madhapur’s overall vacancy rate is now just 7.5%. For the Grade A+ properties, it is a staggering 4.8%. Effectively, the premium office towers in Hyderabad’s most desirable tech corridor are almost entirely occupied, the report said.
No new office buildings were completed in Hyderabad in the first quarter of 2026. The pipeline for the rest of the year, about 11 million square feet, is concentrated overwhelmingly in Gachibowli, not Madhapur. So while new supply is coming, it is not coming where the demand is highest.
Why Hyderabad, specifically
It is worth stepping back and asking why Hyderabad has become so attractive to global firms in the first place. According to the report, the city has spent years building a talent base, including engineers, finance professionals, and data analysts, that is large enough to staff operations of significant scale. It also has the infrastructure: the HITEC City cluster, reliable power, and an airport that connects reasonably well internationally.
Compared to Bengaluru, Hyderabad still offers competitive costs. Compared to smaller Indian cities, it offers depth of talent that few others can match. It sits in a sweet spot, and global companies have noticed.
BFSI now accounts for 23% of leasing in the city, up meaningfully as global financial firms build out their India operations. IT-BPM still leads at 36%, but the mix is broadening, the report added.
What comes next
The city-wide vacancy rate has fallen to 20.22%, which sounds high but has dropped nearly three percentage points in a year. With Gachibowli emerging as the next supply corridor, it is expected to account for 86% of new office supply coming in 2026, and some pressure on Madhapur may ease as occupiers willing to accept a lower rent consider moving further west.
But for the foreseeable future, if a global company wants a Madhapur address with a Grade A building and immediate availability, it is going to pay a premium.