India will add 20 million sq ft of A-Grade mall spaces in next 3 years – Anarock Consulting

In a recently shared data by Anarock Consulting, India will add 20 million square feet of Grade A mall space over the next 3 years to its 100 million square feet space spread over 250 malls. Vacancy at malls stood at 8% with 50 malls shutting down or getting re-positioned as mix-use centers. Sharing his trends and insights on India’s retail real estate, Ashutosh Limaye, Director and Head, Anarock Consulting Services, further added, “Data gathered in malls is also a ‘revenue’ and perhaps will prove to be more valuable than rents and revenue share as predictive and prescriptive analytics of data is driving profitability with their applications based on consumer behavior, store performance etc. Retail malls accounted for 14% of the US $14 billion of private equity funds that India’s real estate sector attracted over past four years. Half of the 14% funds invested in retail malls were in non-metro cities like Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Indore.”

In this context, Timothy Earnest, Group Director and CEO, Al Futtaim Malls, which is looking at mall business outside UAE, added, “Malls are not dying. They are going through a dynamic and exciting transformation as we measure our customers sentiment and happiness with our properties with 2.5 million Facebook follower and 5 million visitors to our website. Footfall, dwell time, convenience and social media engagement, special moments are significant for social engagement with customers to drive revenue beyond space leasing.”

Pushpa Bector, Executive Vice-President & Head, DLF Shopping Malls said, “We have an app called look-out platform that reaches to 1 million customers and quantify their experience about malls on social platforms. Each property tells us a different story based on our conclusions from date mining based on data collection of customer moments in the mall.”