Cushman & Wakefield has released “From Square Footage to Smart Footage: How PropTech Will Power the New Office Paradigm”, a research report that examines how PropTech is reshaping India’s commercial office sector, moving it beyond selective digitisation to digitally native, future-ready workspaces.
The analysis combines a mapping of over 2,200 active PropTech firms across the building lifecycle, focused on commercial and mixed‑use assets, with targeted inputs from 20 senior leaders spanning developers, asset managers, workspace operators, facility managers, and PropTech companies. The report highlights how rising cost pressures, occupier expectations and regulatory requirements are converging to make PropTech and AI central to defining Grade-A office quality and operational performance. It also asseses current adoption patterns, the value being created and the key challenges that continue to shape technology deployment across the sector.
The report finds that while India has made significant progress in digital infrastructure across sectors, real estate continues to trail in technology adoption. Globally, the sector ranks in the bottom quartile for AI readiness indicators, constrained by fragmented systems, limited integration across building lifecycle, and low enterprise-wide deployment. In India, this gap is visible when compared to sectors such as BFSI and IT, where adoption levels exceed 50%, while real estate remains at an early stage of digitisation.
At the same time, the economic case for adoption is becoming harder to ignore. Construction in India continues to face persistent productivity and cost challenges. Raw materials, which account for nearly 60% of construction costs, have grown at an average rate of around 10% annually since FY21, while labour costs have risen by roughly 8% per annum. Productivity benchmarking further shows that completing comparable construction work in India often requires more than twice the labour effort seen in developed markets. These pressures are tightening margins and increasing delivery risk, pushing owners and developers to adopt technology that improves predictability, reduces rework and enhances cost control.
Against this backdrop, the report maps a rapidly expanding PropTech ecosystem, identifying more than 2,200 active firms operating across the building lifecycle. Adoption to date has been strongest in downstream functions such as leasing, facilities management and asset operations, where technology has helped improve transparency, tenant engagement and operational efficiency. However, upstream stages such as planning and design continue to lag, even though late-stage design changes are cited by industry leaders as a major cause of project delays and cost overruns. The report highlights this gap as a critical area where technology adoption can deliver outsized value.
A central theme of the report is the changing definition of Grade-A office space. Certifications such as green building ratings, WELL and WiredScore have moved from being optional differentiators to baseline expectations. As of H1 2025, 52% of India’s office stock is green-certified, with certified buildings commanding rental premiums of around 11% and up to 5% higher occupancies compared to non-certified assets. Institutional ownership has reinforced this shift, with nearly 90% of REIT-owned office portfolios now green-certified, alongside growing adoption of digital connectivity and wellness standards. The report underscores that such certifications are increasingly enabled by PropTech, through tools such as integrated BIM, IoT-based monitoring and data dashboards that allow performance to be tracked and reported real time.
Occupier behaviour, particularly from Global Capability Centres (GCCs), is further accelerating this trend. The report notes that functions linked to AI, data and cloud already form a significant part of GCC activity today, with the share of such functions expected to nearly double by 2030. As a result, occupiers are increasingly prioritizing compliance-ready, digitally enabled workplaces that allow speed-to-occupy and measurable performance from day one. Assets without adequate digital infrastructure are increasingly being filtered out early in leasing discussions, raising expectations for landlords and developers.
The report also highlights a significant opportunity in India’s build-to-suit (BTS) office stock. It estimates that India’s top 10 occupiers account for approximately 73 million square feet of BTS campuses, representing about USD 11 billion in asset value. Traditionally bespoke and outside institutional leasing, these campuses could be standardised and institutionalised through PropTech, expanding investible Grade-A inventory and improving performance oversight.
While proptech solutions are widely available, the report cautions that scaling remains the key challenge. Industry feedback points to three recurring barriers: difficulty in proving return on investment, integration challenges with legacy systems, and a fragmented vendor landscape that limits interoperability. AI is positioned as a critical enabler in this next phase, helping connect siloed systems, automate decision-making and enable performance to be measured consistently across portfolios rather than at the level of individual buildings.
Commenting on the findings, Mr. Anshul Jain, Chief Executive – India, SEA, MEA & APAC Office & Retail, Cushman & Wakefield said, “The real estate sector is entering a phase where expectations around efficiency, transparency and performance are rising sharply. As digital adoption and AI-led functions expand across businesses, buildings are increasingly expected to operate with the same level of predictability and accountability.PropTech provides a practical pathway to achieve this. By embedding technology across the building lifecycle, it helps address persistent inefficiencies in delivery and operations, while enabling owners, investors and occupiers to measure performance consistently across portfolios. Importantly, it also strengthens the sustainability agenda—enabling smarter energy management, real-time monitoring, better resource utilisation and more credible ESG reporting. As assets scale and standards tighten, the role of technology will shift from supporting individual use cases to underpinning how commercial real estate is planned, delivered and managed, making performance, experience and sustainability outcomes far more measurable and scalable.”
Proptech is defined here as an umbrella of solutions spanning traditional applications (leasing, operations, occupier experience) and ConTech tools (planning, design and execution).
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