COMMERCIAL REALTY WELL POISED RECOVERY IN 2021
HOW COMMERCIAL REALTY FARED IN YEAR 2021? While 2021 showed only marginal growth in net absorption of 2.2%, Q4 of 2021 (Oct’21-Dec’21) showed highest absorption amongst all eight quarters since the beginning of 2020. Office Vacancy has dropped from 15.9% in Q3 2021 to 15.3% in Q4 2021 backed by good leasing activity. The re-opening of workspaces has provided a fillip to the commercial real estate sector. Additionally, leasing large-quality office space is likely to increase as companies are increasingly hiring. WHAT HAVE BEEN THE LEARNINGS FROM THIS YEAR? The year gave rise to the demand for wellness-focused office spaces, something that we incorporated in our first project, Ramanujan Intellion Park, Chennai, almost a decade back. 2021 also gave rise to projects that incorporated health and safety features for employees. Understanding this need, Tata Realty became the third developer across the country to receive WELL Health and Safety Rated portfolio by IWBI and aims to achieve WELL Certification for our assets. WHAT WERE THE NEW STRATEGIES ADOPTED BY THE COMPANY? We were able to continue to leverage the confidence of our clients to continue high levels of occupancy across our operational projects. To continually engage with our clients, we created smaller, higher powered, and focussed teams to ensure uninterrupted functioning of our assets. Digitization remains a key focus area and we implemented various touchless interventions during this period. We continue to focus on bringing efficiencies by creating a Central Command Centre to monitor, mine and use data. We also managed to grow our commercial portfolio by adding new assets. We began the construction of Intellion Park, Navi Mumbai – one of the largest IT parks in Mumbai and aim to develop 7.5 mn sqft in the next seven years. We remain upbeat of the commercial sector and will expand our portfolio in 2 more cities in the short to medium term. GIVEN THE SEZ SUNSET CLAUSE, ONE OF THE KEY CHALLENGES WHERE WE SEEK DIRECTION AND SUPPORT FROM THE GOVERNMENT IS FOR A LONG TERM ROADMAP TOWARDS REVIVING SEZ DEMAND UNDER THE EASE OF DOING BUSINESS PLATFORM.
Tags : RITESH SACHDEV – SR. VP AND HEAD COMMERCIAL LEASING AND ASSET MANAGEMENT TATA REALTY & INFRASTRUCTURE LIMITED COMMERCIAL REALTY WELL Health and Safety Rated portfolio Ramanujan Intellion Park Chennai IWBI