Real Estate Drives Business Strategy

India has moved from expansion market to core operating base for global business. For U.S. and multinational leaders, the India question has become practical: where to build, how fast to move, and which locations can support workforce, infrastructure and growth at the same time.

That scale raises an important question: Can real estate keep pace with the role India now plays in global growth, workforce planning and long-term strategy?

“For most global clients, their second largest real estate portfolio today is in India,” says Radha Dhir, Chief Executive Officer, India, JLL. “And in fact, the second largest workforce is in India.”

The world’s largest companies have already voted with their footprint and their headcount. India now sits close to the center of global business operations. The challenge is turning that presence into lasting advantage.

Real estate has moved to the center of that question. Location decides whether companies can access the right talent. Workspace design shapes how people collaborate and perform. Infrastructure determines whether ambition can scale.

The pressure to get this right keeps rising, because decisions must be made faster. "The biggest challenge facing our clients today is speed. Speed of judgment," says Dhir. "We used to have three-year planning. We used to have five-year planning. In a world that's changing so fast, where every quarter there's so much transforming, speed is what's on all our clients' minds."

For occupiers and investors, that speed changes the value of advice. Clients are not short of information. They need foresight they can act on.

Every leader knows the talent problem. The engineers, data scientists and researchers who drive innovation are scarce, and they are selective about where they work.

They are also clear about what they want. A Bloomberg Intelligence survey of 3,259 office employees found demand for modern offices near shops and transit remains unabated worldwide. Top-tier buildings show stronger occupancy, rent growth and tenant demand. Secondary stock faces structural pressure.

India’s growth story carries its own constraints. Last-mile connectivity can vary sharply between cities and corridors. Power reliability and infrastructure depth can fall away outside the strongest clusters. Grade-A office supply is concentrated in a limited number of micro-markets, which can narrow the choices for companies that need talent, transit, resilience and room to grow at the same time.

That makes real estate a boardroom decision.

Talent is half the equation. Physical infrastructure decides what a business can execute at scale.

In major US innovation hubs, only 9% to 11% of institutional-quality office space was built since 2020. India's leading markets built more than 30% of their core supply over the same period. That responsiveness extends past offices to electronics manufacturing clusters, logistics corridors and expanding power infrastructure.

The pace of development creates opportunity. It also raises the bar for judgment. When demand runs ahead of roads, utilities or ready-to-occupy supply, the wrong micro-market can slow a strategy that looks strong on paper.

Manufacturers feel this most sharply. A semiconductor assembly or EV component plant needs stable power to protect quality, cleanroom-capable facilities to control contamination, and engineers nearby to solve problems fast. Cost incentives alone cannot bridge those gaps.

Knowledge operations face their own version of the same test. India's more than 2,100 global capability centers supply that engineering depth, and they explain much of the country's momentum. Today, 35% of Fortune 500 companies operate a global capability center in India. Certainty helps too. India was once again named as one of the top global improvers in the 2026 Global Real Estate Transparency Index having entered the Transparent tier in 2024.

Together, those signals show why India matters to occupiers and investors. For occupiers, the question is where to build the workforce and workplace that can support growth. For investors, the question is where demand, infrastructure, transparency and timing point to durable value.

All of this makes location decisions more consequential. AI has made the underlying data easier to access than ever, yet someone still has to interpret it.

That is the role of foresight. It’s not enough to know that India is growing. Companies need to know which city, corridor, asset, talent pool and infrastructure base can support their strategy. Investors need to know which signals point to sustainable demand and which risks could limit returns.

For knowledge operations: Are you selecting locations for the depth of the talent ecosystem or for short-term costs? Does your workspace design help people do their best thinking? For manufacturing: Can the infrastructure support precision, from power reliability to engineering proximity?

The deeper question sits underneath. Is real estate a consequence of your strategy, or the foundation that decides whether it succeeds?

Companies that choose the second answer locate where talent ecosystems support sustained hiring, design environments that improve performance, and pick markets whose infrastructure matches their ambition. Whether they build in Bengaluru or Boston, Michigan or Mumbai, the pattern holds.

Real estate drives business. Explore how real estate can drive your growth strategy. See a Brighter Way.