Smartworks has leased 450,000 square feet office space in Hyderabad, in one of the largest commercial real estate leasing deals in the country.
The office space, located in K Raheja Corp’s Mindspace IT park, has a lock-in period of five years, with the lease spread over 10 years.
“The deal was closed in the last quarter and the property is expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2022,” a person aware of the transaction told ET on condition of anonymity.
Smartworks has been lapping up office spaces across the country, with demand from enterprises driving the growth. The firm has added more than a million sq ft in 2021, with plans to double it in 2022.
The new centre in Hyderabad that’s coming up at the K Raheja property can seat more than 4,000 people.
“The growth for managed office spaces has been driven by clients eyeing distributed workspaces across locations,” said another person aware of the deal.
Smartworks did not reply to queries emailed by ET.
The transaction was facilitated by Cushman and Wakefield, which refused to comment on the deal.
Earlier this year, in the single largest flexible office space lease deal in the country, Smartworks leased 560,000 sq ft space in Pune’s Baner locality.
Smartworks is one of India’s largest providers of flexible workspaces, with a footprint of about 5 million square feet across 32 locations in nine cities, including Delhi-National Capital Region, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.
It caters to more than 400 organisations across Fortune 500 companies.
Led by increasing demand from larger enterprises, this segment is likely to move towards 5% of total office stock, pushing the total market size to about 51 million sq ft by 2023.
Total flexible space stock in metro cities is likely to rise to about 40 million sq ft in 2021. Tier-2 cities are witnessing increased growth in flexible office spaces.
A Colliers report said that flexible space stock in tier-2 cities is estimated to have grown more than twofold this year, to 5.5 million sq ft.