Mindtree News: Mindtree Leases Large Office Space in L&T’s Upcoming Chennai IT Park

The over 10-year lease deal is for L&T Innovation Campus, a mixed-use development sprawling over 40 acres, two people aware of the deal said.

“The deal was signed in the first quarter of 2021. The facility is scheduled to be delivered and be operational by the end of 2022, and can seat over 5,000 employees,” one of them said.

When completed, the 5.5 million-sq ft Innovation Campus will be one of the biggest IT parks in Chennai. It is coming up in the IT hub on Mount Poonamallee Road, Manapakkam. The site was earlier a manufacturing facility for L&T Valves.

“L&T’s Chennai project has received good response from various IT companies in India, US and Europe,” said one of the people cited above. “We are working on some pre-commitments, and we are headed in that direction.”

L&T did not respond to ET’s queries till press time Friday.

Chennai recorded gross absorption of 1.5 million sq ft of office space during Q1 2022, a 3.5x rise year on year, according to a Colliers report.

This was led by prior precommitments by large occupiers that has been absorbed. Technology sector accounted for almost half of the total leasing during the quarter, the report said.

Majority of the leasing activity was concentrated in Mount Poonamallee Road (MPR), which accounted for almost 36% of the city’s absorption, followed by CBD and Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) pre-toll locations, which accounted for about 21% and 18%, respectively, it said.

“Chennai recorded a three-fold jump in absorption…in comparison to Q1 2021,” said Kanchana Krishnan, managing director, Chennai, at Colliers India. “Clearly, business sentiments are returning to normalcy after the waning impact of the third wave of Covid-19 post January 2022. We also anticipate this streak in leasing momentum to continue through the next quarters,” she said.

L&T, an over $21-billion infrastructure-to-technology conglomerate, had acquired Mindtree in 2019. It holds a 61.03% stake in the Bengaluru-based IT company that runs independently and employs over 35,000 people in India.