Indian warehousing posted record absorption in 2025 — Knight Frank counted 72.5 million sq ft, CBRE 36.9 million. Each headline is a single national number. Decomposed by tenant category, three categories — third-party logistics, e-commerce, manufacturing — take roughly two-thirds of all Grade-A leasing. The concentration is buried in the average.
From CBRE India's Industrial & Logistics 2025 tenant mix. Colliers' Q1 2026 report puts the figure at "around two-thirds." Three tenant categories drive the demand the headline cap-rate averages across.
India's warehousing market had a record year, and the record is reported three ways. Knight Frank counted 72.5 million square feet of warehousing transactions in 2025 — up 29% year-on-year — with Grade-A at 63% of leased space. CBRE counted 36.9 million square feet of industrial-and-logistics leasing — up 16%. Colliers counted 11 million square feet in Q1 2026 alone — up 22%.
Knight Frank's 72.5 million and CBRE's 36.9 million describe the same calendar year. The roughly two-times gap is not a measurement error — it is a definitional divergence. Knight Frank counts industrial demand broadly, manufacturing-inclusive; CBRE's industrial-and-logistics definition is narrower. Same market, two boundaries. The reader who quotes one publisher's number must quote its universe alongside it.
A single national absorption number — at any of the three boundaries — tells a buyer of warehouse yield very little about the risk underneath. A Grade-A warehouse yields what it yields because of who pays the rent. The rest of this brief decomposes that: by tenant category, and by corridor.
Decompose the Grade-A leasing headline by tenant category and the concentration is plain. CBRE's 2025 mix puts the top three categories — third-party logistics, e-commerce, manufacturing — at roughly 76% of leasing. Colliers' Q1 2026 report says "around two-thirds." The cap-rate averages across the whole tenant base; the demand sits in three categories.
The concentration is the editorial finding. CBRE's 2025 tenant mix — third-party logistics roughly 32%, e-commerce roughly 25%, engineering and manufacturing roughly 19% — sums the top three categories to about 76% of Grade-A leasing. Colliers' Q1 2026 report reaches the same place from a different quarter: 3PL one-third, e-commerce plus automobile roughly 32%, three categories "around two-thirds."
No publisher discloses named-tenant absorption share — there is no public figure for any single occupier's percentage of the market. Individual large-format deals appear in public deal data (Zomato Hyperpure in Bhiwandi; Blue Dart in Gurugram) — M-20 cites the named occupier and city only as illustrative examples of category demand, never aggregated into a share. The verified, publisher-anchored finding is the category concentration: three categories, two-thirds of the market.
The tenant-category concentration has a geographic mirror. Bhiwandi, on the Mumbai corridor, led the country with 4.9 million square feet of Grade-A absorption in 2025 (CBRE). Pune took roughly 22% of national volume — about 16 million square feet — and Mumbai roughly 20%, about 10 million square feet (Knight Frank). Delhi-NCR and Chennai together took 46% of CBRE's 2025 annual leasing, each above 8 million square feet.
In Q1 2026, Colliers put Delhi-NCR at 28% of leasing and Chennai at 21% — nearly half the quarter in two markets. The micro-markets within those corridors — Hoskote-Narsapura near Bengaluru, Bhiwandi near Mumbai — concentrate the demand further.
Publishers report this data at city and micro-market level. The corridor framing below is a RAOSCAFF construction — city absorption mapped onto the highway and freight corridors those cities sit on. The pattern it shows is the publishers' own: the warehouse market is concentrated on the corridor axis as tightly as it is on the tenant axis.
| City / micro-market | Corridor (RAOSCAFF mapping) | Grade-A absorption | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bhiwandi | Mumbai freight corridor | 4.9 mn sq ft — led the country | CBRE 2025 |
| Pune | Chakan-Talegaon corridor | ~16 mn sq ft = 22% of national volume | Knight Frank 2025 |
| Mumbai | Bhiwandi corridor | ~10 mn sq ft = 20% | Knight Frank 2025 |
| Delhi-NCR | NCR logistics belt | ~8.8 mn sq ft (Jan-Sep) · 28% of Q1 2026 | Knight Frank / Colliers |
| Chennai | Oragadam corridor | above 8 mn sq ft · 21% of Q1 2026 | CBRE / Colliers |
| Delhi-NCR + Chennai | — | 46% of CBRE 2025 annual leasing | CBRE 2025 |
Grade-A warehouse yields in India run a 7.5-8% range, per Knight Frank's Investment Yield Guide. Grade-A vacancy is 13%, against Grade-B's 9.2% (CBRE); rents rose 3-4% year-on-year. Those are the headline yield metrics — and like the absorption headline, they are averages.
A 7.5-8% cap-rate is the blended yield across a tenant base in which three categories drive roughly two-thirds of demand. The yield a buyer underwrites is a claim on rent; the rent is paid disproportionately by third-party logistics operators, e-commerce platforms, and manufacturers. The single cap-rate number does not show that — the tenant-category decomposition does.
M-20 does not forecast whether that concentration is a risk or a strength — that is a reader's call, and it depends on a renewal calendar no publisher discloses. The brief's claim is narrower: the yield is a function of who pays the rent, and the headline cap-rate averages the whole tenant base into one number that the category cut decomposes.
RAOSCAFF Mirror Brief 01 decomposed India's office build-out: CBRE reported 20.7 million square feet of office absorption in Q1 2026, 44% of it Global Capability Centres. Mirror Brief 20 decomposes the logistics tail of the same urban economy — the warehouse space that third-party logistics operators, e-commerce platforms, and manufacturers lease to serve the cities where those offices and the premium households sit.
The office and the warehouse are two ends of one build-out. The GCC employee in a Bengaluru office orders from an e-commerce platform; the platform leases the Grade-A warehouse in the Hoskote-Narsapura micro-market that fulfils the order; the 3PL operator runs the last mile. M-01 mapped the office; M-20 maps the warehouse. The connective tissue is the same urban demand, read from the logistics end.
For the allocator weighing where in that build-out to stand, the M-20 reading is specific: the warehouse absorption headline is a single national number; the yield is concentrated in three tenant categories and a handful of corridors; the renewal calendar that would price the concentration risk is not disclosed by any publisher.
India's warehouse absorption headline is a single national number — 72.5 million square feet, or 36.9 million, depending on the publisher's universe. A buyer of warehouse yield needs the decomposition underneath it: which tenant categories drive the demand, and which corridors hold it. Both decompositions point the same way — concentration. Three tenant categories take roughly two-thirds of Grade-A leasing; a handful of corridors take roughly half. The 7.5-8% cap-rate is an average drawn across that concentration. Mirror Brief 20 makes one claim: the warehouse yield is a function of who pays the rent and where, and the single absorption headline shows neither. The brief decomposes the concentration from the publishers' own data; the reader draws the conclusion.
None of these are recommendations. They are decompositional implications — the "so what" the warehousing reports imply but never spell out.
After triangulating three warehousing publishers, four decompositions remain absent from the Indian industrial-RE research record. Mirror Brief 20 does not claim to fill them.
One. Named-tenant absorption share. No publisher discloses any single occupier's percentage of Grade-A absorption. Tenant-CATEGORY share is published; named-tenant share is not. M-20 reframes to category concentration accordingly; named deals appear only as illustrative examples.
Two. The 2025 Grade-A-specific cap rate. Knight Frank's Investment Yield Guide gives a 7.5-8% range; the precise 2025 Grade-A figure sits behind the publisher's paywall.
Three. Corridor-level absorption. Publishers report at city and micro-market level. M-20's corridor mapping is a RAOSCAFF construction with this methodology footnote.
Four. Tenant lease-expiry schedules by category. No publisher discloses the rolling renewal calendar that would quantify the concentration risk.
All URLs verified live by RAOSCAFF Investment Researcher Phase 0 source viability check 2026-05-21. Full URL list in FACTS.md § J. New figures added to the Cross-Brief Number Registry on M-20 publish.
Research approach. Mirror format — anchor on the warehousing publishers' own research (Knight Frank, CBRE, Colliers), decompose by their disclosed tenant-category and corridor data. No primary collection, no named-tenant share invented.
Source standards. Every figure traces to a published warehousing report or its press coverage, fetched live by Investment Researcher Phase 0 on 2026-05-21. Cross-brief numbers reuse the RAOSCAFF Cross-Brief Number Registry byte-identical (M-01 CBRE office absorption 20.7 mn sq ft · GCC share 44%). Cross-publisher reconciliation tolerance ±5%; the Knight Frank-vs-CBRE ~2× divergence is a definitional difference, surfaced as content.
Construction. FACTS.md is the source-of-truth document. The hero is a tenant-category concentration panel built from CBRE's disclosed 2025 mix (3PL 32% · e-commerce 25% · manufacturing 19%). Phase 0 caught and corrected one fabrication risk: the original "top 3 tenants = 35-45%" thesis was reframed to "top 3 tenant CATEGORIES = ~two-thirds" because no publisher discloses named-tenant absorption share — the reframe is publisher-anchored and sharper. The corridor mapping is a RAOSCAFF construction (publishers report at city level), labelled as such.
Limitations. Named-tenant absorption share is not publicly disclosed. The precise 2025 Grade-A cap rate is behind a publisher paywall — M-20 cites the verified 7.5-8% range. Corridor-level absorption is mapped from city-level data. Tenant lease-expiry schedules are not disclosed.
Editorial position. Predict-not-recommend. Defamation-disciplined. RAOSCAFF holds no advisory relationship with any developer, REIT, logistics operator, or tenant named in this brief. All decomposition uses publicly disclosed data. RAOSCAFF does not recommend purchase, sale, or holding of any warehouse asset, REIT unit, or security. The brief surfaces what the data discloses and what it does not; the reader's decision is the reader's.