Global capability centres are expected to account for close to half of India's Grade A office leasing by the end of this year, according to a Colliers report, confirming them as the single largest source of demand in the commercial property market.
The projection is 30 to 35 million square feet of leasing across the top seven cities in 2026, which works out to 45 to 50 percent of overall office demand. The report expects annual GCC leasing to rise to 35 to 40 million square feet in 2027, taking their share to around half of the total. In the first half of this year GCCs took 16.6 million square feet of Grade A space, 46 percent of all office leasing across those cities.
The report attributes the durability of that demand to multinationals continuing to expand their India footprint and to the country's position as a base for innovation and enterprise work. It projects the number of GCCs passing 4,000 with a market size of 105 billion dollars by 2030, and describes India as moving from an outsourcing destination to a hub for enterprise capability.
Concentration is the risk worth naming. A commercial property market where one tenant category takes half the space is exposed to that category's hiring cycle in a way a diversified market is not. The same report that reads as a growth story for developers is also a description of how narrow the demand base has become.