Japanese technology firm NTT Data leases one lakh sq ft in Gurugram

NEW DELHI: Japanese technology firm NTT Data has leased about 100,000 square feet (sq ft) of office space at Brookefield’s Candor TechScpace in Gurugram, in one of the biggest such deals in the financial and tech hub since the lockdown.

“The company was looking for office space in north India for some time now and has finally locked in this office space in Gurugram,” a person familiar with the matter said.

NTT Data had said earlier that it would invest about $2 billion over the next four years to expand its data centre business in India.

NTT’s Global Data Center division on Wednesday launched a new data centre in Mumbai, expanding its capacity in the country by 30%.

Brookfield declined to comment, while NTT Data did not respond to an email query till press time on Friday.

The deal comes at a time when Noida had outpaced Gurugram in office space leasing during the April-June quarter, the first time in a decade.

The trend is likely to continue, with most deals in Gurugram in the July-September quarter being small-size ones, according to property consultants.

According to a Knight Frank report, the first half of the year saw its average transacted space decrease to 2,927 square metres (sq m) from 4,340 sq m compared to the same period in 2019.

The number of deals in NCR also came down to 66 in the first half from 81 in the same period of 2019.

The trend of smaller deal sizes has been mainly propelled due to smaller space take-up by corporates in Noida and Gurugram.

“In Gurugram, the grade A rental ranges above Rs 100 per sq ft. Most of the leasing activity this quarter has happened in Noida, where the rental is Rs 50-60 per sq ft. Within Gurugram, too, most of the leasing has happened in new areas, where the rental is around Rs 60,” said a property consultant.

NTT, which had earlier acquired local data centre firm Netmagic, currently operates 10 data centres across four major cities, with over 1.5 million sq ft and over 150 MW of power generation.

It plans to double the data centre capacity in the next two to three years.