Oracle, NetApp look at exclusive campuses

BANGALORE: Corporate India’s growth plans are being cemented on Bangalore’s real estate turf. In the last three months, hectic parleys between developers and corporate entities have been taking place over possible land buys or lease agreements.

There has been speculation about Oracle looking to pick up a million sqft of space in Bangalore. NetApp is said to be looking at buying land in Whitefield. According to sources, NetApp India, the Indian arm of the global data storage equipment maker NetApp, is in talks with DLF over a possible 15-acre land buy in the IT hub.

DLF, which was thinking of constructing an IT Park on this particular land parcel, but has now decided to hive it off. Brokers in the Whitefield belt told TOI that the prevailing land rates in the area, where this particular land parcel is located, is around Rs 8 crore to Rs 10 crore an acre.

So if the deal goes through, NetApp would spend between Rs 120 crore to Rs 150 crore. The company currently operates out of a leased facility in the Embassy Golf Links Business Park.

Several real estate consultancy firms told TOI that Oracle and NetApp are the only companies that are looking at outright land buys at the moment. “We expect these deals to go through by either December or before the last quarter of the ongoing fiscal,” said a source.

A senior real estate consultant, who requested anonymity, said, “There are a whole lot of other companies looking at leasing office space between 100,000 sqft and 200,000 sqft.”

Nitesh Estates expects to sign leasing agreements with pharma, insurance and banking companies for over 100,000 sqft of space in the coming three months. Quintiles, a clinical research company , is said to be among these.

So what’s driving this sudden interest in real estate ? The Bangalore real estate market is seen to have bottomed out and a slow revival is on the cards, with realty prices heading up. “Since prices are far less than what they were, by around 10% to 30% as compared to 2008, companies are looking to cash in before another price rise cycle sets in,” said a developer who is currently talking with an IT company on a possible land sale.

Prestige Group and Embassy Group are two other real estate companies that are said to be in talks for the sale of prime land parcels to corporate entities. The Bangalore real estate market is seen to have bottomed out and a slow revival is on the cards, with realty prices heading up.

In the last three months, hectic parleys between developers and corporate entities have been taking place over possible land buys or lease agreements.