Real estate in Chennai

The unabated growth of the Indian IT sector is having positive effects on various sectors and real estate is no exception. As the industry grows and spreads across various cities and towns, demand for space has rocketed. Apart from Indian majors like Wipro, Satyam and Infosys, even global majors like IBM and Dell have joined in the quest for property space.

Development of SEZs, IT parks and integrated IT townships are what the industry is focusing on. Infosys Technologies plans to set up a 50-acre SEZ in Mysore, and has also been allotted another 311 acres of land in Mangalore for the same. Wipro currently has 2.1 million sq ft office space at its ten development centres and plans to increase the space to 4.1 million sq ft office space next fiscal. Real estate developers have joined the IT companies in developing IT parks and integrated IT townships. Recently, the IT sector attracted 49 applications for setting up SEZs, including Mahindra Gesco for Jaipur, MIDC for Pune, Ansal IT City and Parks Ltd for Greater Noida and Satyam Computer Services Ltd for Thotlakonda in Visakhapatnam and for two projects in Hyderabad.

It is estimated that by 2010, the IT sector will employ an additional workforce of about 1 million workers near five tier 1 cities, and about 600,000 workers across other towns. This increase in workforce and operations necessitates creating technology communities and hence the race for space. The Indian real estate market is expected to grow from the current USD 15 billion to USD 100 billion in the next ten years and a substantial portion of this growth will be fuelled by the IT sector.

We are already witnessing the impact of the IT sector on both residential and commercial property across not only metro cities but also tier II cities. The advent of SEZs and IT townships will further boost the prospects of small cities and change the face of realty there.