Maximum options with minimum costs

It has long been a trend of new companies - Indian and multinational - to find space for their offices, set ups in the suburbs of large cities. The advantages are numerous - lesser rents, lesser pollution, larger areas, better access to residential areas and so on and so forth. This trend today has refined further.

Companies are no longer satisfied with just large, uninterrupted spaces with state-of-the-art connectivity and facilities. Round-the-clock power and Internet connections have all become blase.

What is gaining ground today is the made-to-order facility.

More and more builders and now sitting down with their clients and building their properties centred around their needs -never mind the fact that most of these properties are either going to be leased or rented.

Or that half a dozen years down the line, the client may move on -to either a larger facility belonging to the same builder or might decide to acquire property on his own.

What probably started the trend was Bangalore, according to a real estate consultant.

Companies like Wipro and Infosys built their own facilities with nine-hole golf courses, swimming pools and tennis courts and large food courts, apart from grocery stores and the like, he says.

Another consultant, S. Ranganathan, however, believes that it was the slow-moving real estate market that really set off the trend, not just in Bangalore, but also cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.

"Builders wanted to add value, in whatever form possible, so they began giving clients the maximum options," is his contention.

Bangalore's IT corridor is just the place where you can find such facilities. From Whitefield to Sarjapur Road to even Hosur Road, large companies who were not sure of their fortunes in a fluctuating world market, decided to rent out places that could be built to suit not just that particular IT company, but the entire genre.

The ubiquitous IT parks were just one indication of such a trend. Now, you have Metro Media Technologies leasing about 43,000 square feet in Electronic City; HSBC leasing over 150,000 square foot of built space on Bannerghatta Road from RMZ Corp; Verifone and Texas Instruments leasing space from India Builders Corp on Wind Tunnel Road and Honeywell following suit with another private builder for a 50,000 square feet space on Bannerghatta Road.

Mumbai, too, has seen a similar fashion gaining force, the most recent being the 100,000 square foot facility at Malad which has been taken by Technimont ICB.

The Bandra-Kurla area has several such buildings - the Wockhardt Towers, Dena Bank, Nabard, NSE and the like - ranging from spaces of 150,000 square feet to 200,000 square feet.
On the Lower Parel side is the HDFC building that is coming up and in Andheri is the 70,000 square feet facility for P&G.

Hyderabad, too, has its share of made-to-order facilities. Intergraph was one of the first, nearly a decade ago to take a place from Raju Constructions, built specifically to its requirements.

HSBC, too, had rented out a building that had been modified to suit their requirements. Now, they are moving to a larger facility, built by the same builder they have been associated with. SQL, Infotech Enterprise and Softball, all have facilities built to their particular specifications by the builders.

"It is clear that these buildings will only be in the suburbs, mainly because the suburbs are not over crowded like the central business districts," points out Ranganathan.

"The trend is likely to continue for quite some time, for there really are no signs of the real estate market reaching such a level that companies will do with whatever they can find."