Chennai: Despite unfavourable socio-economic environment, warehousing stock in top eight cities, which includes, NCR Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad has added 27 million square feet to reach a total of 238 million square feet in 2020.
As per the ‘India Real Estate Outlook – A new growth cycle’ by JLL, the demand is further expected to grow around 160 per cent to reach 35 million square feet in 2021 if the external conditions stay stable, mainly if there is no relapse of Covid/ lockdown and so on.
“Industrial spaces witnessed a 13 per cent Y-o-Y growth in total stock in Grade A and B warehousing space in top eight cities. The overall warehousing space stands at 238 million square feet at the end of 2020 compared to 211 million square feet in the previous year thereby resulting in a net supply of 27 million square feet,” said Yogesh Shevade, head, Industrial Services, JLL India.
Tier II and III cities are gaining strength in warehousing, which is eminent from the changing pattern of a typical warehouse sizes with some large transaction sizes of 0.3–0.4 million square feet, even in cities such as Coimbatore and Lucknow as outliers and ranging between 0.1–0.2 million square feet in general, as compared to 0.025-0.05 million square feet, a few years back.
“Interestingly, the year 2020 saw more than 6.6 million square feet of leased manufacturing in predominant manufacturing destinations of top eight cities,” said Saravanan Srinivasan, head of manufacturing practice of Industrial Services, JLL, India.