The volume of ground lease transactions is rising sharply across India’s port-linked and highway-adjacent industrial corridors, as logistics and manufacturing players seek capital-efficient access to strategic locations. This corridor, where land values are high due to connectivity and infrastructure density, is ideally suited for long-term lease models that allow occupiers to establish custom-built facilities while avoiding the capital lock-in of land acquisition. The ground lease structure, offering tenures of 30 to 99 years, enables asset-light expansion and faster deployment of large-scale operations near key logistics nodes.
Areas surrounding major ports such as Mundra, Ennore, JNPT, Visakhapatnam, and Kattupalli, as well as logistics-intensive zones along the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC), have emerged as hotbeds for ground lease activity. Tenants—ranging from container freight station (CFS) operators and 3PL providers to export-oriented manufacturers—are leasing land for build-to-suit warehouses, cold storage units, and assembly plants, taking advantage of multimodal logistics and proximity to export gateways.
For landowners and state industrial development authorities, the model ensures steady, inflation-indexed rental income while retaining ownership of valuable real estate assets. Developers and institutional investors also prefer these structures, as they reduce land-related capex, minimize development risk, and enhance long-term portfolio yield. As port-linked and highway corridors continue to evolve into high-volume freight and production ecosystems, ground lease transactions are becoming a critical enabler of industrial infrastructure growth, supporting both regional development and India’s position as a global manufacturing and logistics hub.
