Page 16 - Clean India Journal - Sept 2023 Digital Edition

Cover Story

Making hay with Make-in-India

Which are the fastest growing manufacturing segments? How
have private players and the government invested in their
growth? How can FM aspire to grow alongside them? Here are

all the answers.

Warehousing
A continuous change in
consumption trends and the
opening of newer markets for
e-commerce has made agility a
requisite for businesses; they need
to scale up operations at short
notice when necessary and scale
down when numbers indicate their
strategy needs reconsideration.

Third-party logistics (3PL)
providers enable this agility,
moving SKUs within a network of
warehouses that is both widening
and densifying. The National
Logistics Policy and Gati Shakti
scheme are driving investments in
this sector, which have increased
by over 40% in the past two years.
At the end of FY23, India
should have 412 million sq ft
across types of warehouses;
the relative lack of high-quality
warehouses foretells potential
growth in this segment. Occupiers
prefer Grade A properties, which
accounted for 58% transactions
of warehouse leases in 2023. This
year alone, over 51 million sq ft
of warehouse stock was picked
up by the market, across the four
metropolitan cities and Bengaluru,
Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
E-commerce reached its
peak during the peak of the
pandemic; while demand has now
rationalised, it has by no means
plateaued, and is only growing. As
penetration reaches smaller towns
and even villages, warehousing is
one sector that will be geography-
and climate-agnostic in its growth.

SEPTEMBER 2023•Clean India Journal
16 www.cleanindiajournal.com