Realty deal amid COVID-19: ANSR leases 3 lakh sq ft commercial space at Embassy NXT in Bengaluru

The company has signed a long-term lease with Embassy Office Parks in addition to its existing 3.5 lakh sq ft, taking the total area to 6.5 lakh sq ft.

Moneycontrol News

At a time when most companies are focusing on work-from-home as the new normal, global consulting firm ANSR’s India arm has leased 3 lakh sq ft space across eight floors in Embassy NXT, the premium new office tower in Embassy Manyata Business Park in Bengaluru, sources told Moneycontrol.

The company has signed a long-term lease in Embassy NXT in addition to its existing 3.5 lakh sq ft with Embassy Office Parks, taking the total area to 6.5 lakh sq ft. The new office will be operational from October, an Embassy spokesperson confirmed.

"We continue to see robust demand from global corporations and are pleased that existing occupiers such as ANSR are expanding their operations in India," the spokesperson told Moneycontrol.

The partnership comes in at a crucial time for the economy and serves as a positive reinforcement against the backdrop of COVID-19.

Sources told Moneycontrol that the rentals for the lease have been fixed at around Rs 115 per sq ft a month and that the agreement carries a rental reset clause every three years.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show

Embassy Office Park CEO Michael Holland had said last month that while the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an uncertain near-term outlook for many businesses worldwide, “we are uniquely positioned to weather this pandemic-induced storm with our best-in-class office portfolio and strong balance sheet. While demand is likely to moderate considerably through 2020, we believe that in this environment, Grade-A supply will reduce considerably over the medium term, consolidation in the office market will continue and high-quality institutional landlords, such as Embassy REIT, will gain market share.”

On the issue of work-from-home, Holland had said that the general view is that it is competent but not comfortable.

"We are not worried about the WFH phenomenon, we think it is part of the normal evolution of this market as it becomes more sophisticated. We believe what will happen is that companies would want to be in high quality, less dense offices, in better environments that offer a total business ecosystem,” he had said.

Embassy Manyata Business Park is the flagship asset owned by Embassy Office Parks REIT, India’s first and only listed REIT. The Embassy REIT was listed in April 2019.

ANSR is a global leader in establishing and operating Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and have successfully led the establishment of some of the best managed GCCs and Centre of Excellence (CoE)s in India.

A proposed metro station is within 100 metres to Embassy NXT and a flyover with direct access to the Outer Ring Road is at its periphery.

Sponsored by Blackstone, the global alternative asset management giant, and Embassy Group, the Bengaluru-based developer, Embassy REIT owns 33 m sq ft of office space across seven Grade A office parks and four city-centre office buildings in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and the National Capital Region.

More than 80 percent of Embassy REITs’ tenants by area leased are global bellwethers such as IBM, JPMorgan, Facebook and Google.

Moneycontrol News

TAGS: #ANSR #Bengaluru #Covid-19 #Embassy NXT #lease #Real Estate

first published: Jun 23, 2020 02:25 pm