GCCs grab 65% of office space leased in Bengaluru
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
6 hours ago
- Mint
IPO-bound Knowledge Realty Trust bets on high GCC demand, eyes acquisitions
BENGALURU : Knowledge Realty Trust (KRT), a real estate investment trust (Reit) that is set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) on 5 August, has seen high demand from global capability centres (GCCs), and is eyeing third-party acquisitions for growth, senior company officials said on Wednesday. The KRT Reit, sponsored by Bengaluru-based developer Sattva Developers and BREP Asia SG L&T Holding, a Blackstone portfolio company, will raise ₹4,800 crore through the IPO. It has already concluded a pre-IPO round in June, raising ₹1,400 crore. KRT has fixed the price band for the issue at ₹95-100 per unit. The minimum bid size is ₹15,000, and the issue closes on 7 August. The entire proceeds from the pre-IPO and IPO will be used for repayment of debt, which will then stand reduced to ₹12,000 crore. Also Read: DLF sets foot in Mumbai with maiden project 'Post debt repayment of ₹6,200 crore, we will have enough dry powder to make third-party acquisitions from other developers," Shirish Godbole, chief executive officer, KRT, told Mint. Tenant mix 'The key differentiator in the KRT Reit is the well-located asset profile. Around 29% of our portfolio is dedicated to front office tenants. The Reit business is far more predictable today, with swelling occupancy and high demand from GCCs that have worked in their favour," Godbole added. KRT will be Asia's second-largest Reit by size and India's largest by gross asset value (around ₹62,000 crore) and net operating income, owning 46.3 million sq ft of office space across 29 assets in six cities - Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurugram, and GIFT City, Ahmedabad. Global capability centres are in-house technology hubs set up by multinational corporations for critical services such as HR, and finance functions, IT support and maintenance, as well as for research and development. Around 45% of the rental income in KRT's portfolio comes from GCCs. Some of KRT's prominent GCC tenants include Cisco, Google, Amazon, Novartis and JP Morgan. Also Read: DLF sells all 416 homes for over ₹2,300 crore in new Mumbai project As GCCs double down, IT services companies, a dominant tenant base for office space in India, are recalibrating their real estate footprint. Less than 5% of KRT's portfolio exposure is towards IT services companies. Growth outlook Reits have faced their share of challenges in recent years, many of them pandemic-induced. But with the office market turning around in terms of higher leasing and improved occupancy levels, they are gaining more acceptance. Quaiser Parvez, chief operating officer, KRT, said, 'The KRT portfolio has 91% occupancy. We have the lowest loan-to-value ratio (LTV) among all the listed (Reit) peers, which gives us room and the flexibility to grow and acquire new assets." LTV is the debt borrowed compared to the underlying asset value, and is an indicator of financial risk. As part of its inorganic growth, KRT also has 6.7 million sq ft of right of first offer (ROFO) assets, which are currently under development by Sattva, that can be added to the portfolio from 2027-28 onwards. A ROFO is a pre-emptive right granted to a party, giving them the the first opportunity to purchase an asset. 'This is a pivotal moment for India's office and capital markets. Our partnership with Blackstone has been transformative—not just in scale, but in demonstrating how the right collaboration can create something truly exceptional while making premium office real estate accessible to all investors," Bijay Agarwal, managing director, Sattva, said. Also Read: Blackstone-backed Knowledge Realty Trust's ₹4,800-cr IPO to open on 5 August KRT would be the fifth listed Reit in the country, after the three office Reits - Embassy REIT, Mindspace REIT and Brookfield India REIT - and the only retail-focused Nexus Select Trust. Blackstone has participated in three of the four Reits listed in India. This is the 20th year of Blackstone's operations in the country, across its private equity and real estate businesses. US-based Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, is also the largest office space owner in India.
The Hindu
7 hours ago
- The Hindu
Hyderabad has captured imagination of firms setting up GCCs
Hyderabad's value proposition to companies setting up global capability centres has captured the imagination of industry leaders, a senior official of Telangana government told a GCC Leadership Conclave here on Wednesday. From superior infrastructure, talent pool, ecosystem, comparatively lower cost of operations to a responsive government, the value proposition that Hyderabad offers has helped the city attract a large number of GCCs over the last three years, said Jayesh Ranjan, Special Chief Secretary to Youth Advancement, Tourism and Culture Department. Seeking to drive home how the city has emerged a preferred destination for global companies, he said 'not a single week passes that we do not get into a serious GCC engagement... either the decision making leadership comes for a due diligence visit or we are making an announcement or inaugurating a new GCC office. On some days there are two or more such engagements.' Addressing the Conclave hosted by The Leadership Federation, he said compared to Bengaluru rentals, cost of living as well as talent besides rate of attrition are lower in Hyderabad, he said. Talent pool, innovation ecosystem and forum of GCCs are other aspects aiding the growth of the city as the hub. The government is continuously exploring what's next by proactively planning to address the challenges that accompany development. Several new IT parks are currently under development, including Neopolis, which is set to be on a par with Mumbai's Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) regarding infrastructure and scale, Mr. Ranjan said. In a release, the organisers of the Conclave said senior leaders from global enterprises, government, academia and innovation hubs participated in the programme centred on the evolving role of India's GCCs, how the facilities are transitioning from traditional support functions to becoming engines of enterprise innovation, value creation and economic growth. 'India has the opportunity to cement its position as a global hub for innovation and excellence through a modern Global Capability Center network powered by AI,' said Paul Roehrig, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Ascendion.
The Hindu
8 hours ago
- The Hindu
Munich firm Celonis to cash in on India's GCC prowess
Celonis, a Munich-based process mining and process intelligence firm that offers realistic business contexts to customers with the help of digital twins, says it is bullish on India's growing global capability centre landscape: home to over 2,000 GCCs, accounting for 60% of GCCs round the globe. Alexander Rinke, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Celonis said India was emerging as world's epicentre of process-powered enterprise AI and Celonis was currently engaged with over 150 GCCs in India, including that of Dell Technologies, Wells Fargo, Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Merck and ABB, to name a few. 'We have built strong partnerships with leading system integrators like TCS, PwC, EY, Deloitte, and Capgemini in India. We are also deeply invested in the academic ecosystem here. More than 130,000 learners across nearly 340 Indian universities have already engaged with our Celonis Academy. For us, India is not just a market but a hub of innovation, talent, and community,'' he told The Hindu. He said process mining was a way to understand how businesses worked by extracting data from their systems by visualising how processes actually flow. Most companies have a general idea of how things should work, but the reality is often quite different. ''Process mining reveals that gap. Process intelligence is built on that foundation. It combines the raw process data with business context to create what we call a living digital twin of your operations. This gives you full transparency and a shared language across departments to spot inefficiencies, remove friction, and take action,'' Mr. Rinke explained. He said Celonis' Process Intelligence Platform, through Process Mining, was capable of creating business context for its clients and offering them a digital twin of their business operations. ''It's a system-agnostic, bias-free platform that provides a common language for understanding and improving how a business runs. It is the key enabler for companies to maximise the ROI from their AI investments,'' Mr. Rinke claimed. Mr. Rinke was in India at the opening of Celonis' Garage, an innovation hub in Bengaluru which collaborates with ecosystem partners comprising customers, technology partners, startups and academic institutions to identify, validate and incubate ideas that can evolve into scalable solutions for global enterprises.
