Warehousing emerges as high-growth realty assets class in India

The cumulative supply in India‘s warehousing and industrial sector is expected to reach 516 million sq ft by 2026 from 344 million sq ft in the first half of 2023. Around 15 million sq ft of new stock were added between January and June this year with Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru gaining maximum share of the supply, showed data from JLL India. In the first half of the year, net absorption or new leases stood at 15 million sq ft in the top eight cities of India. In terms of demand for warehousing, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi-NCR emerged as the top three locations in terms of demand during this period.

“The logistics and industrial sector have shown resilience post pandemic. We expect the logistics and industrial leasing to pick up pace in the second half of this year and upward bias on rentals in select markets in the near future,” said Yogesh Shevade, head of logistics & industrial, India, JLL.

The rising demand is certainly driving the investments into the warehousing sector. Last year, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and Asia-pacific focused real estate services and investment company ESR Group entered a strategic partnership to set up a $600 million joint venture to acquire income-producing core industrial and logistics assets in India. IndoSpace, the industrial real estate and logistics parks developer backed by the Everstone Group, is looking to deploy over $1 billion to acquire new warehousing and logistics assets across India over the next two-three years.

Welspun One Logistics Parks (WOLP), an integrated fund and development management platform focussed on warehousing and industrial real estate, has raised over ₹1,000 crore through its second Alternative Investment Fund (AIF), WOLP Fund 2 within four months of its launch.

The speed of the fundraising underscores the strong investor confidence in the prospects of the warehousing and industrial sector in the country. Following the implementation of the Goods & Services Tax (GST) and emergence of ecommerce, the Indian logistics and warehousing sector is headed towards transformative growth led by rising demand for modern warehousing.