New Launch - India Real Estate Report 2026.
45.5 million square feet. That's how much office space India leased in the first six months of 2026, the highest absorption ever recorded for a half-year period, and Global Capability Centres are the reason nearly half of it happened.
The number that explains the whole quarter
GCCs accounted for 43% of total office leasing in India during H1 2026, according to a presentation by Equirus. That's not a marginal contribution; it's close to half the entire market, and GCC transaction volume grew roughly 30% year-on-year, which tells you this isn't a plateauing trend. It's accelerating.
Push further into large-scale deals specifically, and GCCs get even more dominant. They accounted for 53% of large office transactions during the same period, cementing their position as the single largest occupier segment in Indian commercial real estate right now. Overall leasing grew 9.6% year-on-year, with Q2 2026 alone contributing 24.6 million sq ft.
Supply is keeping pace, mostly
New office supply reached 32 million sq ft in H1 2026, up 14% year-on-year, providing what Equirus described as adequate inventory to support future demand. That's a meaningfully different picture from some of the localised supply crunches this desk has flagged before in retail real estate; office supply here appears to be tracking demand reasonably well at the national level, even if specific micro-markets still face their own constraints.
Green buildings aren't a niche preference anymore
Here's where this report connects directly to a pattern we've already seen forming. 76% of new office supply added in H1 2026 was green-certified. 73% of leasing activity happened in green-certified assets. And 70% of leasing occurred in buildings less than ten years old.
Read those three numbers together, and the message is unambiguous: sustainability certification has moved from a differentiator to close to a baseline expectation among large occupiers. A developer bringing new Grade A stock to market without green certification is now building for a shrinking minority of the leasing pool, not a premium niche.
Why this matters beyond one earnings-season presentation
Equirus's framing is direct: India's office market has evolved into a large-scale institutional asset class. Record leasing, sustained GCC expansion, and a decisive shift toward premium, ESG-compliant stock aren't separate trends running in parallel. They're the same trend, viewed from three angles.
For developers, the implication is straightforward even if not easy to execute on. GCCs want quality, sustainability-certified space in established commercial hubs, and they're willing to commit to large, long-duration leases to get it. That's precisely the combination- big footprint, long tenure, quality specification- that institutional capital chases when evaluating commercial real estate as an asset class rather than a collection of individual leases. This report is essentially confirmation that Indian office real estate has crossed that threshold, at scale, across a full six-month period rather than in isolated pockets.
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