Movement of office space in Bengaluru has maintained stable momentum since the dawn of the year. The city registers sale of 12 to 14 million square feet (mn.sq.ft.) of office space annually. By the end of August, the sector has already seen sale of 8 mn.sq.ft. Although there have been cautious calls on capital expenditure in the wake of a general slowdown being witnessed in the national economy, the sector has not seen any slump as far as Bengaluru is concerned.
This is mainly attributed to Bengaluru’s capacity to constantly generate new jobs. The city is said to be adding 150,000 new jobs annually. With 100 sq. ft. assigned for workspace for an average individual, the city annually requires around 15 mn.sq.ft. of additional workspace.
The year has already seen Australian telecom giant Telstra setting up its global in-house centre spread over 250,000 sq. ft. space in Embassy Tech Village. Amazon has been adding six to eight thousand jobs in the city over the last few years.
Google and Deloitte are expanding their footprint in the city. Ikea has been looking for land but a final word is yet to be heard. Walmart has come up with a tech centre on the ORR and is acquiring space in Cessna Park.
After co-working, co-living has emerged as the new asset class in the city. Currently, the existing facilities in the city offer 5,000 to 7,000 beds. But, the city may be looking for facilities with around 30,000 to 40,000 beds in the next two years as the young people are switching preference to co-loving spaces from PGs that offered bare essentials of existence.
This has happened mainly due to induction of new technology where aggregation dispenses the dependability on human hands. A diversity of sources spoken to within the CRE sector were unanimous that only larger volume lends profitability to the sector.
These spaces, mainly counted in terms of beds (instead of sq. ft. space), provide adequate private space (around 200 sq. ft), common lounges, TV rooms and gyms and come studded with housekeeping services, laundromats (coin-wash), barbeques, and personal safety features (such as digital locks, facial recognition access, emergency response team etc). With no ready stock, this sector is all likely to register soaring growth in months ahead.
Early this week, Embassy Group announced taking up co-living as a new business initiative. The Group said it is taking up construction of facilities with 20,000 beds initially and will take the number to over a lakh beds in the next five years.
The company is making forays into the sector under EPDPL Co-Living Private Limited and will target growing migrant millennial workforce.
