1) India’s warehousing ecosystem has traditionally been built around large logistics parks on city outskirts. What factors are now driving the need for warehousing closer to urban consumption centres?
Historically, India’s warehousing market was largely unorganised—close to 80% fragmented and only about 20% institutional. That mix is now changing quite rapidly with the entry of large developers like Logos, Horizon, and IndoSpace, who are bringing in scale, better infrastructure, and more standardised assets.
At the same time, the shift we’re seeing is from land economics to time economics. Earlier, decisions were driven by how cheaply you could acquire land on the outskirts. Today, it’s about how quickly you can service demand. Consumption is far more distributed across cities now—across residential clusters, commercial pockets, and high-frequency delivery zones—so servicing everything from one large peripheral warehouse is no longer efficient.
What is driving this is a combination of factors—last-mile delivery requirements, infrastructure improvements, and the rise of quick commerce. The model itself is evolving into a hub-and-spoke system, where you have a large master warehouse supported by smaller, more strategically located distribution nodes within the city. India already has around 450 million square feet of warehousing stock, and that is expected to scale up to nearly 1.2 billion square feet by 2027, which gives you a sense of how quickly this segment is growing.
2) With the rapid rise of e-commerce and quick-commerce, how are delivery timelines reshaping the design and location strategy of logistics facilities in major Indian cities
Delivery timelines are now directly influencing real estate decisions in a way we haven’t seen before.
The onset of 10-minute delivery models by players like Zepto and Instamart has completely changed the landscape. These operators are setting up dense networks of dark stores within residential neighbourhoods, typically within a 3-kilometre radius of each other, to be able to meet those timelines.
So warehousing is no longer just an out-of-city requirement. It’s becoming both—large-format warehouses outside the city for bulk storage, and in-city facilities for rapid fulfilment. That dual-layer model is now becoming standard.
This also changes how these assets are designed. You’re seeing a stronger focus on faster turnaround, smoother movement, better loading and unloading efficiency, and the ability to handle far more frequent dispatch cycles. In many ways, the warehouse is now directly linked to the customer promise, not just a backend operation.
3) Globally, cities such as Tokyo and Singapore have embraced multi-storey warehouses. Do you see similar formats gaining traction in Indian metros?
Yes, but selectively—and increasingly in the right locations.
Indian metros are starting to face the same constraints—limited land availability in key corridors and steadily rising land values. At some point, building horizontally stops making economic sense, especially when you need to stay close to the consumer.
We are already seeing policy support for this. KIDB, for instance, has introduced norms allowing FAR of over 5 in industrial zones, which makes vertical development viable. Developers like Brigade and Welspun have already started exploring multi-tier warehouse formats.
At the same time, this is not going to be a blanket shift. It has to work operationally—access, ramp movement, loading efficiency, compliance, all of that has to make sense. So what you will see is adoption first in dense, high-value urban corridors, where the cost of being far away is higher than the cost of building vertically.
Also, alongside this, there is another trend playing out—older commercial assets within the city are increasingly being repurposed into central distribution warehouses. So it’s not just about building new formats, but also about adapting existing assets to respond to demand more efficiently.
4) What role do you believe commercial real estate developers will play in bridging the infrastructure gap for last-mile logistics?
The role of developers is becoming much more important, because this is no longer just about adding warehousing supply. It’s about creating infrastructure that works for how cities actually function today.
As cities expand, the line between commercial real estate and logistics infrastructure is becoming less rigid. Developers who understand land, access, mobility, and occupier behaviour are in a strong position to create assets that support storage, movement, and distribution within the city fabric.
A big part of this is flexibility—being able to respond to different use cases and even changing asset classes over time. In many cases, we are already seeing commercial spaces being adapted into logistics-support infrastructure. So in that sense, developers are not just building real estate anymore, they are shaping the next layer of urban infrastructure.
5) Projects like Featherlite Spectrum demonstrate hybrid commercial infrastructure. What prompted this approach?
With Spectrum, the shift was quite organic.
We initially built it within our own factory premises, but as that location became more central and land values increased, and as our operations outgrew the site, it made more sense to reposition the asset. We pivoted to leasing it as a central distribution warehouse—initially to Flipkart and then to multiple tenants—while also activating the ground floor with retail.
What really worked there was the combination of visibility, accessibility, and functionality. It’s about six kilometres from the city centre, with strong frontage and efficient loading and unloading capability, which made it ideal for distribution.
More broadly, what we’re seeing is that occupiers are looking for spaces that can do more than one thing. They want the advantage of a commercial address, but they also need operational efficiency. Traditional office formats don’t always deliver that, and peripheral warehouses are not always the right fit either. That’s where hybrid assets start to make sense.
6) How do you see the future of urban warehousing and last-mile logistics evolving over the next decade?
Urban warehousing will increasingly become core city infrastructure rather than a backend function.
I don’t think 10-minute delivery, in its current form, is here to stay—there are clear pricing pressures, and at some point private equity capital tightens. But sub-30-minute delivery is definitely here to stay. Indian consumers have already adapted to that level of convenience.
This trend will not be limited to Tier 1 cities. It will move into Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets as well, with the same expectations around speed and accessibility. Players like Swiggy and Zomato are already competing aggressively for well-located last-mile spaces, in some cases paying rents in the range of ₹200–300 per square foot depending on the micro-market.
Structurally, the sector will continue to grow strongly. India’s warehousing market is expected to reach around $100 billion by 2030, with a clear shift from unorganised to organised supply. We expect that balance to move closer to 50–50 over time.
With policy support from GST, the National Logistics Policy, and continued incentives for warehousing parks, the sector should see sustained growth at a CAGR of 14–18% over the next five years. What we’re really seeing is a long-term structural shift—towards a more organised, efficient, and urban-centric warehousing ecosystem.
