India’s Real Estate Market Poised For Rapid Growth In Data Centers, GCCs, Warehousing

Real estate in India has seen sound growth in pre-pandemic years. From commercial real estate to residential, all segments have seen good demand from end users. This has led to higher revenue growth opportunities for real estate consultancy firms. Address Advisors is one such real estate consultancy firm that operates across the whole spectrum of the sector, which has seen high demand from clients. The Bengaluru-headquartered firm counts large ecommerce companies, startups and IT firms as its clients. In a conversation with the Bizz Buzz, Dipen Karania, Director at Address Advisors said that the consultancy firm has also developed deep expertise in emerging segments like GCCs and data centre business apart from warehousing. It is advising global firms to set up GCCs in cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad

Can you provide a brief overview about the operations of Address Advisors?

We started operations back in 2016. Then, we were operating under a different name. In 2018, when we started calling ourselves Address Advisors we are a real estate consultancy firm. But our operations span more than telling a consumer that this is something to be bought, or this is something to be leased. Our operations are far wider in all spectrum. We have gone ahead and done both forward as well as backward integration. We have a team of business development experts, who are sound in research and are studying different sectors of the economy, trying to understand where India is poised, and where India is growing. But Over the years, what we have successfully done is that we have also understood the various opportunities in the market and done both forward as well as backward integration into the real estate.

We operate at different brand names for our various other services, but what all we do as an brokerage house is to do a design; we do manage spaces; we do facilities management; we also underwrite projects from a developer. We are happy to completely buy out the entire offering and then take it to the market. So, that's the crux of our operations.

Can you give me a brief overview about the segments in which Address Advisors operate? Do you have a segment, where you have emerged as a preferred partner?

We started our operations with commercial real estate vertical. That is where the founders were absolutely comfortable (in the beginning). And that continues to be our biggest vertical even today. We serve marquee assets in commercial real estate. But over the years, we have kind of developed our services into all asset classes, including land, industrial and housing that includes residential. We also have been able to close some marquee transactions in the hospitality segment. We have a specific team that is focussed on retail segment. So, we have put together a very competitive team that is kind of delivering the best value over the years.

As far as name recall is concerned, we are delivering value across the spectrum. There are three segments in which we heavily operate, which are commercial real estate, that includes industrial and warehousing along with residential segment.

What are your engagement levels with the startup ecosystems?

Our commercial real estate team is in the thick of activities in the startup ecosystem in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. We are the most preferred property consultant, which is probably servicing the largest numbers of startups and most large players in the market. I have had the chance of probably transacting with the biggest names in the industry in the industrial and warehousing spaces. You talk about e-commerce, we deal with the largest e-commerce players. In the heavy industries space, we have transacted with the two big names of India.

We also heavily deal with residential real estate. We are the only structured real estate consultant who has taken this first step of having our own property expo back in February 2024. We launched something called as a home affair. And very recently, we concluded another property expo, which was a two-day affair. So, what I want to highlight is that we have a good name recall across all the segments, we operate in.

But, which segment does contribute the most in revenue term?

Commercial real estate has been the foundation stone for us, from where we started, and even to this date, it continues to be both our breadwinner as well as the lead in terms of revenue. So, commercial real estate is the biggest vertical for us.

Recently, we have seen many global companies setting up Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India. Do you provide consultancy to global firms for setting up GCCs here?

We have been doing our research and realised very early on that India is going to be a preferred destination for setting up GCCs. That is the reason that we have set aside teams, and trained them for providing consultancies to these entities. Those efforts are now paying dividend. This year has been phenomenal in terms of engagements with a lot of GCCs. As you know, most of these GCCs are coming in two cities- Bengaluru & Hyderabad, that’s where we are operating.

Do you also operate in the data centre space, which is slowly emerging as the next growth spot?

Absolutely! We do have a specific team that has been trained to understand the technical aspects of a data centre. We understand the requirements of a data centre; we understand their power requirements; we understand the bandwidth requirements; their structure requirements among others. We also understand which are the developers that will be able to deliver data centres to them. We have also done our research in terms of which location inside these cities are more compatible in terms of the physical infrastructure, in terms of the manpower, in terms of the skilled labour for setting up a data centre. This is the kind of information that we pass on to our clients. So, we do have specific teams working with them.

Can you provide a brief overview about the funding of real estate projects by Address Advisors?

What has happened from the initial days of our journey is that we have been associated with a lot of banking firms. Our association with HNIs also remains very strong. You must be aware that the funding in real estate comes from these two segments. During our transactions, we find many developers looking for the right funds. So, we've facilitated a lot of such funding based on our relationship. However, we are very specific on the kind of developer that we are working for. We are very specific in terms of the projects that we are selecting to underwrite, because we are bootstrapped. We are not using external funding at all. We are very specific in terms of where we are deploying our money.