As India’s e-commerce sector continues to expand rapidly across urban and rural regions, the country faces mounting pressure to scale up its warehousing infrastructure. This growth brings with it a dual challenge: building high-quality storage and distribution spaces, while simultaneously meeting rising sustainability standards set by corporates and global investors.
A new report titled India’s Sustainable Warehousing Landscape: A Greenprint, released in Bengaluru, reveals a significant shift in India’s warehousing sector toward green-certified infrastructure. From just 88 million sqft of Grade A warehousing in 2019, the figure has surged to 238 million sqft by 2024 — a 2.5x growth. Of this, institutional-grade warehousing has jumped from 8 million sqft to 90 million sqft in the same period.
Most significantly, over 65 million sqft of this institutional-grade warehousing is already green certified or in the process of certification — through frameworks such as LEED and IGBC. The report forecasts a further expansion of green-certified warehouse space to 270 million sqft by 2030, riding on the back of corporates’ Net Zero goals and investor-backed developers prioritising sustainability.
More than 45 percent of the current institutional portfolio is already green-certified, with another 10 percent pre-certified and 10 percent undergoing certification. Industry experts see major potential in retrofitting non-compliant Grade A spaces, as institutional investors increasingly mandate green certifications to meet the expectations of multinational clients.
Yogesh Shevade, Head-Industrial & Logistics, India, JLL, has noted: “Tenants are eyeing 30 to 40 percent energy savings over a project’s lifecycle, along with benefits from green materials, water saving and waste recycling.”
As institutional investment in warehousing has doubled post-Covid, the trend toward sustainable warehousing is no longer a value-add — it is now a necessity. With 80 percent of the upcoming 260 million sqft supply projected to be green-certified by 2030, India’s green warehousing is not just catching up — it is leading.