Ascendas Singbridge to double office space in India

Ascendas Singbridge, the largest foreign real estate developer in India, plans to develop 16 million square feet office space in next three to four years to double the space owned and operated by it in the country, a top official said on Thursday.

The Singapore-based company, whose core business is development of IT parks, has lately diversified into logistics parks and data centres and is also entering into co-working spaces, said Ascendas Singbridge's Chief Executive Officer, India Operations, Vinarma Srivastava.

Ascendas, which has 12 business parks in six cities, is also helping Andhra Pradesh in the development of its capital city Amaravati.

The company has its business parks in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune and NCR.

Srivastava told reporters that Ascendas plan to build logistics parks in these cities, developing 14 to 15 million sq feet in next four to five years. "We have set up 300 million US dollars fund with Temasek for building the logistic park," he said.

Since there is high demand from multinational customers in the six cities, the firm is focusing on them. He, however, did not rule out looking at opportunities in other cities.

On data centres, he said they were still conceptualising it and hiring a team.

Ascendas will also be entering co-working spaces in India. This is already a strong business for the company in Singapore and China. He said they may not start with all six centres at once and would make a beginning with one or two centres.

Ascendas, which started operations in India in 1994, has assets of 2.5 billion Singapore dollars in the country.

India accounts for 12 to 15 percent of Ascendas' global portfolio in terms of the size of real state space.

--IANS

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