Brookfield IndiaReal

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

By Ujjaini Dutta

BENGALURU, May 14 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Artificial intelligence may be cutting jobs in India but its office leasing market is enjoying a temporary reprieve. Investors piled into the latest initial public offering of a Blackstone-backed BX.N real estate investment trust in Bengaluru, the outsourcing hub that hosts one quarter of the country's office stock. Units of Bagmane Prime BAGM.NS - whose tenants include Amazon AMZN.O, Alphabet's GOOGL.O Google and Samsung 005930.KS - opened up 4% on their debut on Thursday. Tight supply of commercial space will keep vacancies low and rents firm for a while yet in the $190 billion market.

India's offices logged record quarterly leasing volume at 30 million square feet for the three months to March, up 6% year-on-year, according to Knight Frank, nearly one-third of the record annual gross leasing volume of 83 million square feet in 2025. Sophisticated back offices of multinational companies, also known as global capability centres, accounted for 40% of last year's demand. Overall vacancy rates remain low at 14% and landlords across key cities such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad have seen rents increase by as much as 8% year-on-year.

But Bagmane's prospectus for its $357 million offering notes that AI-led workforce restructuring is prompting tenants to reassess space requirements: GCC headcount in India is expected to grow 7% a year through March 2030, a sharp slowdown from an 11% annual pace in the previous decade and a half, according to industry body Nasscom and JLL Research.

The comfort is that new completions for the quarter ended March 2025 were barely half of the space absorbed during the same period. What's more, companies spend heavily on fitting out offices so they can be slow to reduce their office space even after they shrink headcount. Bagmane's well-located portfolio in what it calls the "world's best performing micro-markets", including Bengaluru's highly-sought after Outer Ring Road, will offer a further cushion in the event of any slack in demand.

For now, India's leading publicly traded REITs are doing well. Embassy Office Parks EMBA.NS, Mindspace Business Parks MINS.NS and Brookfield India BROF.NS have outperformed the benchmark Nifty 50 stock Index .NSEI and local developer DLF DLF.NS by up to 26 and 35 percentage points over the past one year. Investors, though, will be watching closely for any sign the balance is shifting from landlords to renters.

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CONTEXT NEWS

Units of Blackstone-backed Bagmane Prime Office opened up 4% on May 14 following the real estate investment trust's initial public offering. The deal was nearly 24 times subscribed as of May 7, National Stock Exchange data showed.

The offering worth 34.05 billion rupees ($357 million) comprised new units worth 23.9 billion rupees and existing units 10.15 billion rupees by the selling unitholder, Blackstone.

(Editing by Una Galani; Production by Aditya Srivastav)

((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on DUTTA/[email protected]))

May 11 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS:

• MARCH-QUARTER CONSOL NET PAT 369 MILLION RUPEES

• MARCH-QUARTER CONSOL REVENUE FROM OPERATIONS 9.6 BILLION RUPEES

• DECLARED DISTRIBUTION OF 5.50 RUPEES PER UNIT

Source text: ID:nNSE1tpgs7

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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March 31 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS:

• APPOINTS SHASHANK JAIN AS CEO AND MD

• ALOK AGGARWAL TO RETIRE AS CEO AND MD

Source text: ID:nBSE5jBfJT

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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March 12 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS:

• ISSUANCE OF UNITS OF BROOKFIELD INDIA REIT

• RAISING OF FUNDS UP TO 11.25 BILLION RUPEES BY ARLIGA ECOWORLD

• ISSUANCE OF UNITS VIA INSTITUTIONAL PLACEMENT OF UNITS UPTO 40 BILLION RUPEES

• ARLIGA ECOWORLD TO RAISE FUNDS FROM 360 ONE REAL ASSETS ADVANTAGE FUND

Source text: ID:nNSEbkXNWK

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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Adds statement from Embassy REIT CEO in paragraph 10, updates share moves

By Gopika Gopakumar and Hritam Mukherjee

MUMBAI, Feb 6 (Reuters) - India's central bank on Friday announced measures to boost credit to small businesses and the real estate sector to improve access to formal financing and strengthen last-mile lending.

The Reserve Bank of India proposed doubling the limit on collateral-free loans for small enterprises to 2 million rupees ($22,170.49) from 1 million rupees ($11,085.25).

The revised norms will apply to loans sanctioned or renewed from April 1, 2026.

The Reserve Bank of India also said banks would be allowed to lend to real estate investment trusts under prudential safeguards, extending a facility already available to infrastructure investment trusts.

REITs own and manage income-generating assets such as offices and malls. India's markets regulator recently allowed them to be treated as equity, opening the door to mutual fund investments.

Shares of Mindspace Business Parks REIT MINS.NS rose 0.9% to lead listed trusts, while Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS gained 0.2% and Nexus Select Trust NEXE.NS advanced 0.5% in afternoon trade.

The broader benchmarks were mixed in afternoon trade, clawing back some of their losses after the central bank kept rates unchanged as expected on Friday.

"Upon review and considering the presence of strong regulatory and governance framework for listed REITs, it is proposed to permit commercial banks to extend finance to REITs, subject to appropriate prudential safeguards," the RBI said in a statement.

The existing guidelines are being aligned to match "prudential safeguards" proposed for lending to REITs, it added, and once made effective, could spur fresh funding into property assets and stoke the growth of the sector.

"This policy will help expand access to longer-term, competitive bank finance, which will support healthier balance sheets and stable growth by reducing the need for frequent refinancing," Amit Shetty, chief executive of Embassy Office Parks REIT EMBA.NS said.

($1 = 90.2100 Indian rupees).

(Reporting by Gopika Gopakumar in Mumbai and Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)

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Jan 29 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS:

• DEC-QUARTER CONSOL NET PROFIT 1.8 BILLION RUPEES

• DEC-QUARTER CONSOL REVENUE FROM OPERATIONS 6.9 BILLION RUPEES

• DECLARED DISTRIBUTION OF 5.40 RUPEES PER UNIT

Source text: ID:nNSE1DVhCL

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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Dec 13 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS:

• RAISES 35 BILLION RUPEES THROUGH QIP OF UNITS

Source text: ID:nBSERLzs0

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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Dec 9 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS:

• APPROVED FLOOR PRICE OF 287.55 RUPEES PER UNIT

Source text: ID:nNSE6HSysp

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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Aug 7 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust BROF.NS:

• JUNE-QUARTER CONSOL PROFIT 373.5 MILLION RUPEES

• JUNE-QUARTER CONSOL REVENUE FROM OPERATIONS 5.74 BILLION RUPEES

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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BENGALURU, May 16 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust (BIRET) BROF.NS has signed a binding agreement to acquire a 50% stake in four Bharti Enterprises properties for 60 billion rupees ($719 million), including debt, it said on Thursday.

The deal will take place through a preferential allotment of units in BIRET at 300 rupees per unit to Bharti Enterprises, which owns telecom operator Bharti Airtel BRTI.NS, in exchange for the stake.

The properties, some of which are used for commercial purposes, while others host offices and retail stores both, are located in New Delhi and Gurugram and measure a total of 3.3 million square feet in area.

A boom in companies setting up offices in India, coupled with post-pandemic return-to-office requirements and strong retail consumption, have boosted optimism for commercial properties.

With 25.5 million square feet of total leasable area, BIRET is India's fourth-largest listed REIT by market capitalisation, after Embassy Office Parks EMBA.NS, Nexus Select Trust NEXE.NS and Mindspace Business Parks REIT MINS.NS.

($1 = 83.4420 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema)

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By Hritam Mukherjee and Anisha Ajith

BENGALURU, Dec 14 (Reuters) - India's largest real estate investment trust (REIT) Embassy Office Parks EMBA.NS expects the government's easing of regulation for special economic zones (SEZ) to boost its finances from the fiscal year starting April 2024.

Last week, India allowed developers to strip vacant floors in SEZs off the status and lease them to non-SEZ entities. SEZs, set up in 2005, were aimed at incentivising export-oriented companies but lost their allure to new entrants after tax holiday ended in 2020.

While the proportion of revenue Embassy generates from its SEZ properties was not immediately clear from its earnings reports, analysts at brokerage Investec said last week that Embassy has about 55%-60% of its portfolio in SEZs.

"We expect benefits to start showing on our financials from the first half of FY25," Embassy Office Parks CEO Aravind Maiya told Reuters on Tuesday.

"Once we get more clarity on the process and timeline involved in the floor-wise demarcation of vacant SEZ spaces, which is expected in the coming few weeks, we can start leasing out from around March next year."

Embassy, which has business parks at SEZs in Bengaluru and Noida, saw its consolidated profit fall 46% to 236.8 million rupees ($2.84 million) in the September quarter, while its revenue grew about 4%.

The office landlord has seen its SEZ occupancy levels decline from 94% at 2019-end to 80% by September this year.

Meanwhile, the share of leasing for SEZ spaces in overall office leasing has dropped from 22% in 2019 to 7% between January and September this year, data from real estate consultancy Colliers showed.

Analysts expect the recent easing of SEZ rules to benefit commercial realty players who own properties in SEZs.

Embassy's peers Brookfield India Real Estate Trust REIT BROF.NS, Mindspace Business Parks REIT MINS.NS and DLF DLF.NS, who will also potentially benefit from the change in regulation, did not reply to Reuters' requests for comments.

($1 = 83.3238 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee and Anisha Ajith in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun H K and Mrigank Dhaniwala)

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** Shares of Brookfield India Real Estate Trust REIT BROF.NS, Embassy Office Parks REIT EMBA.NS rise as much as 2.90% and 1.7%, respectively

** Morgan Stanley expects the two real estate investors to benefit from government's decision to permit Special Economic Zones (SEZ) to partially lease their space, through the Special Economic Zones (Fifth Amendment) Rules, 2023, announced on Dec. 7

** Morgan Stanley estimates 80% chance of BROF, EMBA rising more than the benchmark Nifty 50 index over the next 60 days

** Brokerage has "overweight" rating on both BROF and EMBA

** New rules likely to lead to increase in occupancy within SEZ parks, and will be beneficial for commercial real estate developers, investors, says JM Financial

(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru)

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Aug 4 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust REIT BROF.NS:

• TO ISSUE 12.7 MILLION UNITS AT 315.04 RUPEES PER UNIT TO PROJECT DIAMOND HOLDINGS

• TO ISSUE AND ALLOT COMMERCIAL PAPERS IN FORM OF USANCE PROMISSORY NOTE(S) UP TO 7.5 BILLION RUPEES

Source text for Eikon: ID:nBSE7FyFPz

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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Aug 2 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust REIT BROF.NS:

• RAISES OVER 23 BILLION RUPEES THROUGH QUALIFIED INSTITUTIONAL PLACEMENT OF UNITS

• PROCEEDS WILL BE USED TO FUND ACQUISITION OF 50% STAKE IN TWO LARGE COMMERCIAL ASSETS

Source text for Eikon: ID:nNSE2WVwY5

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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By M. Sriram

NEW DELHI, June 5 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) BROF.NS has appointed eight investment banks for its planned equity raising of around $400 million, and is targeting the deal's closure by July, three people with direct knowledge said.

The Indian REIT of one of the world's largest alternative asset groups Brookfield manages 18.7 million square feet (1.7 million square metres) of office parks and buildings in cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata and Gurugram near New Delhi. Its tenants include Accenture ACN.F, Amazon AMZN.O and Samsung Electronics 005930.KS.

The trust told India's stock exchanges last month that it planned to raise up to $425 million for a recently announced $1.4 billion acquisition of 6.5 million square feet of Indian offices with Singapore's GIC. It gave no details of a timeline or how it would raise the funds.

The sources said the Indian REIT has started the process to complete the raising by July via a qualified institutional placement, which is a tool used by listed companies to raise funds from big investors such as mutual funds and insurance companies. The sources declined to be named because the talks are private.

The mandated banks are Morgan Stanley MS.N, Citigroup C.N, Bank of America BAC.N and Jefferies JEF.N, as well as local rivals Kotak, IIFL, JM Financial and Axis Capital, the sources added.

A Brookfield spokesperson declined to comment beyond its exchange disclosure last month. Morgan Stanley and Citi declined to comment, while the other banks did not respond to queries.

Preliminary talks with potential investors are underway, said one of the three sources.

REITs own and operate real estate assets, earning rent from the properties they manage that is used to distribute dividends to investors.

The deal plans come amid a slew of fundraisings in the Indian real estate sector, as well as rising demand for office space after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blackstone-backed Nexus Select Trust NEXE.NS listed in India last month, while another large developer Lodha MACE.NS raised around $400 million in a share sale in December.

(Reporting by M. Sriram; Editing by Aditya Kalra and Jamie Freed)

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May 19 (Reuters) - Brookfield India Real Estate Trust REIT BROF.NS:

• BROOKFIELD INDIA REIT AND GIC FORM STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP TO ACQUIRE TWO GRADE-A ASSETS IN INDIA

Source text for Eikon: ID:nNSEbmS468

Further company coverage: BROF.NS

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