Up 29 percentage Year-on-Year: What Record GCC Leasing Says About What Occupiers Actually Want From an Office

Every quarter brings a fresh set of real estate numbers and most of them wash over people who arent in the business of leasing floors This one is worth pausing on Punes office market closed the first half of 2026 with 66 million square feet of gross leasing a 29 percent jump over the same period last year and the highest halfyearly number the city has ever recorded Hyderabad posted almost identical growth Across Indias top eight cities combined close to 48 million square feet changed hands and Global Capability Centres accounted for somewhere between 43 and 45 percent of it their largest share of the market on recordFor me the more interesting point is not just that companies are leasing more space It is about the kind of work they are now choosing to build in India and what that means for the kind of offices they needLook at Whos Actually Signing Not Just How Much SpaceFor a long time GCC was synonymous with costcutting Companies moved processingrelated lowerskill functions offshore to save on wage costs The real estate that housed them reflected that priority It was functional inexpensive and located wherever rent was cheapest That is clearly changing Traditional outsourcing may slow in some areas but GCCs can still grow because companies are bringing more strategic work like AI data engineering cybersecurity risk and analytics into their own centres in India Banking financial services and insurance firms have overtaken pure technology companies as the fastestgrowing category of GCC occupier making up roughly 36 percent of GCC transactions in the first half of the year Foreign BFSI firms alone leased 73 million square feet up close to 70 percent from the year beforeThats a meaningfully different tenant profile A regulated financial institution setting up a centre to handle risk modelling compliance monitoring or increasingly AIdriven trading and underwriting functions isnt optimising for the cheapest square foot available For such occupiers the decision goes much beyond rent Infrastructure reliability security technology employee experience sustainability and the ability to scale start becoming much more important As the work becomes more critical the expectation from the workplace also goes upThe Supply Side Tells Only Part of the Story New commercial construction in Pune fell around 55 percent yearonyear over the same period even as demand climbed steadily But the real question is not only whether Pune has enough commercial inventory The bigger question is whether it has enough of the right quality of inventory for the next set of occupiers A city can have office supply and still have a shortage of good institutionalgrade spaceThat is where the difference between a regular office building and a strong GradeA asset becomes important infrastructure floor efficiency sustainability connectivity amenities and overall operating qualityFlex space has picked up some of that slack Operators leased close to 191 lakh seats nationally in the first half of the year a jump of nearly 68 percent with Pune contributing about 21000 of those seats on its own Flex is also becoming part of how companies manage growth and changing requirements The key is that they want flexibility but not at the cost of qualityThis also puts more responsibility on developers A commercial building planned today will be occupied for many years so it has to be designed not only for todays requirements but for where occupier expectations are headingWhy This Belongs on a Leadership Teams Radar A major office commitment also tells you where a company plans to build its talent technology and strategic capability for the longer term So for companies that still look at office space mainly as a cost that thinking may need to change The question is moving from ldquoHow much space do we needrdquo to ldquoWhat kind of workplace will support our business and people for the next decaderdquoThe 29 percent growth figure will get repeated often over the coming months as proof the office market is healthy But for me the more important point is what sits behind that number Indias GCC story is moving from cost arbitrage towards capability creation And as the nature of the work changes the expectation from the workplace will also changeThe next phase of Punes commercial real estate growth may therefore not be only about building more office space It will be about building better futureready and institutionalgrade workplaces Author Abhishek Puranik Managing Partner Golden AbodesAbhishek Puranik is the Managing Partner at Golden Abodes a premium mixedasset real estate group operating across Pune Mumbai and Goa

Up 29 percentage Year-on-Year: What Record GCC Leasing Says About What Occupiers Actually Want From an Office

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Up 29 percentage Year-on-Year: What Record GCC Leasing Says About What Occupiers Actually Want From an Office

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Mid-Day Fast