Wipro leases 3.5 lakh sq ft at Mindspace Business Park in Navi Mumbai's Airoli

Software major Wipro has entered into an agreement to pick up an entire commercial tower spread over 3.5 lakh sq ft office space at K Raheja Corp’s Mindspace Business Park in Navi Mumbai’s Airoli through a long-term lease, people with direct knowledge of the development told ET.

The IT Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Mindspace Airoli East is a property owned and operated by K Raheja Corp and Blackstone Group-backed listed Mindspace Business Parks Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT).

The Bangalore-based company is leasing the space for a total tenure of 10 years and the agreement provides for a clause to escalate rentals by 15% every three years.

To begin with, Wipro will be paying rentals of around Rs 58 per sq ft a month for the leased space.

“The deal has been finalised and inked. Wipro will start operating from the premises in the next few weeks,” said one of the persons mentioned above.

Wipro declined to comment for the story, while ET’s email query to K Raheja Corp remained unanswered.

Wipro is already one of the key occupiers in this business park and this deal increases its presence in this micro-market.

The company is expected to utilise the new leased space for software development and export.

Navi Mumbai, with its sub-dollar rates, cost-efficiency and grade A office spaces in gated complexes, is seeing increased pick up in commercial leasing by technology companies.

Mindspace Business Park Airoli East is one of the largest office complexes in the Mumbai region. Spread over 50 acres, the park counts Accenture, L&T, Cognizant, Gebbs and DST Worldwide as its key tenants.

Of the total development potential of 6.8 million sq ft in this business park, around 4.7 million sq ft is developed and leased. The latest Wipro lease transaction will push the occupancy further.

Lease transactions for large office spaces are being registered across key property markets led by steady economic recovery, aggressive vaccination drive across the country and rising number of corporates planning return of workforces to office.

Global organisations and domestic corporations including Google, Intel Technology, ABB, WeWork and Veritas Software Technologies, Samsung India Electronics and Future Technology School Foundation have picked up large office spaces in the past few months.

The IT, ITeS sectors are among the prime drivers of overall leasing activity in the top cities and bulk hiring by these firms will influence the demand for large quality office spaces.

Many information technology and IT-enabled services firms are already on a hiring spree amid acceleration in their overall business after the first Covid wave.

According to industry experts, this eventually bodes well for overall office space demand in 2022 and 2023, when it may see return of normalcy coupled with the newly added workforce.

The July-September quarter has already witnessed a sharp uptick in absorption of office spaces led by leasing activity in the information technology and IT-enabled services sector.

The office leasing for the quarter witnessed an over 2.6 times growth at 12.5 million sq ft across 8 key property markets of India, showed a recent Knight Frank India report. With this, the total office real estate transactions have reached 83% of pre-pandemic level quarterly average witnessed in 2019.