Indian Real Estate Ka Sach: Bangalore Traffic, Builders & Biggest Deals

What RMZ’s top commercial real estate leader taught me about building trust at scale, why Bangalore is still the cheapest quality city, and the real reason developers fail

A conversation with Thirumal Govindraj, CEO of RMZ Office and RMZ NXT, one of India’s most powerful commercial real estate leaders with over 25 years in the industry.

There is a question that most people in commercial real estate avoid answering honestly.

What actually separates the developers who build empires from the ones who go bankrupt?

Thirumal Govindraj does not avoid it.

“Most of the issues come from the same place. People get very ambitious. They want to do a lot but they are not financially disciplined. They are not able to sell. They do not have the right teams. That is when failure starts.”

He has watched this pattern play out across 25 years of being on both sides of the transaction: first as an advisor at CBRE placing international clients into Indian buildings, then as an executive building those buildings. In that time he has seen the Indian commercial real estate market absorb 80 million square feet of space in a single year, transform Bangalore’s Outer Ring Road from a strategic corridor into the global technology address it is today, and close what was at the time India’s largest real estate transaction during the depths of the COVID pandemic.

His framework for understanding all of it is deceptively simple: trust, quality, and financial discipline. Everything else is noise.

Part 1: How Indian Commercial Real Estate Grew Up

When Thirumal joined CBRE in 1999, the broking industry had a reputation problem.

“Before the international property consultants came in, broking was very personal. There were very good people in the industry who had long-term customers and they were doing well. But there were also fly-by-night operators. In India there was no barrier to become a broker. No licensing. Anybody who knew somebody would try to become a broker.”

Companies like CBRE changed the nature of the profession. They brought in advisory-based real estate, deep market knowledge, corporate relationship management, and an incentive structure that rewarded people who could genuinely serve sophisticated clients.

“If you have the right EQ to develop relationships, it is a great career. Financially very rewarding. Today a great bank job may give you a good entry level salary, but the jumps in salary on the real estate advisory side are much higher.”

The profession also evolved in what it was selling. In the early days, developers built to cost. Today, Thirumal said, the best developers build to what the future customer will want, not the current customer.

“Five, ten years ago, putting a food court in a commercial building was a big selling point. That was it. Experience was not a factor. It was: here is the office, you take it, you do what you want with it.”

Today RMZ and the best developers in the country are thinking about three layers simultaneously: the corporate client, the employees of that corporate client, and the surrounding community. A building is no longer a building. It is a community center with a commerce function.

Part 2: India Absorbed More Office Space Than Asia, Europe, and America Combined

This statistic stopped me when Thirumal said it.

Last year, total net gross absorption of commercial office space in India was approximately 80 million square feet. Asia, Europe, and America combined, one figure he offered for context, absorbed less.

One country. One year. Eighty million square feet.

Bangalore has consistently accounted for 30 to 35 percent of India’s total commercial real estate market. At 24 to 30 million square feet absorbed annually in a single city, Thirumal said you are talking about 200,000 to 300,000 new jobs coming into Bangalore every year just through commercial real estate absorption.

The driver: India has stopped being a back office.

“India is no longer a cost center. It is no longer an outsourcing base. It is becoming where companies create new businesses. The GCCs are centers of excellence. Companies are seeing they can build knowledge centers here at scale.”

The evolution of what India does for global companies is instructive. It started with call centers, which have largely moved to the Philippines. Then came technology development. Then BFSI, which was the biggest growth story for the last decade. Now GCCs are spanning healthcare, retail, financial services, engineering, and every other sector imaginable.

“Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Citi. They are all large players here. It is no longer global talent arbitrage. It is talent available to build capability at a level you cannot replicate elsewhere.”

Part 3: AI Will Kill Bad Offices, Not Offices

When I raised the concern that AI-driven headcount reductions would damage India’s commercial real estate market, Thirumal disagreed with the framing.

“AI will disrupt but AI will not kill the office. It will kill bad quality spaces.”

His argument: as AI takes over routine, process-driven work, the people who remain in offices will be doing higher-complexity, more creative, more collaborative work. That work requires better environments. The demand for premium, well-designed, community-oriented workspace will likely increase even as total headcount in some categories falls.

“AI is going to reposition the office business. How it is going to be utilized and what quality of people are going to utilize it. You have to skill up. If you do not skill up today you are not going to be relevant.”

He extended this logic to commercial real estate developers themselves. The developers who survive the next decade will not be the ones who simply build the most space. They will be the ones who build the right kind of space, maintain it properly, and continue to create value for clients who have options.

Part 4: The Outer Ring Road Story

The story of Bangalore’s Outer Ring Road is a story about what happens when the right infrastructure meets the right moment.

Thirumal walked me through the early 1990s. The state government wanted Whitefield to become Bangalore’s IT hub. They partnered with the Singapore government on ITPL, the International Tech Park. The vision was sound. The execution ran into a problem that India knows well: infrastructure did not keep pace with development. Access to Whitefield was difficult.

“The next best option was Outer Ring Road. It is strategically placed. East to south to north, it is the best corridor. People coming from the south, the east, the north, the west. It became a 15-kilometer stretch accessible from every part of the city.”

Intel was the first major corporate to move to Outer Ring Road, buying land and building their own campus. The real estate developers followed. RMZ built Eco Space there, one of the first large commercial parks on the corridor.

What followed is now history. Outer Ring Road became the address of India’s technology elite. The building quality is exceptional. The tenant roster is a who’s who of global technology.

And the traffic, as anyone who has tried to drive it knows, is a standing joke.

“People say you can reach Mumbai faster than you can cross Outer Ring Road.”

Thirumal’s take on the traffic is more nuanced than the standard complaint. He estimates that 70 percent of the problem is behavioral, not infrastructural. People drive on the wrong side, cut lanes, ignore signals. The physical roads are not ideal, but the physics of the problem would be significantly better if the social contract around driving held.

“Why do we go to other countries and follow rules? Why do we not follow rules in India? Because you can get away very easily here. You feel entitled. You are in your country. You should get away with what you are doing.”

The structural issue: every time Bangalore’s infrastructure catches up with growth, the city has grown three times. By the time the Outer Ring Road was upgraded, Bangalore needed two more outer ring roads.

“When I moved to Bangalore in the early 90s, in a three to four kilometer radius you could finish the city. MG Road was the center. Go six or seven kilometers either way, that was the end of it. Look at the radius today.”

Part 5: Why Bangalore Is Still the Cheapest Quality City

This surprised me and I pushed back on it. Thirumal held his position.

Of the six major cities driving India’s economic growth, which he lists as Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, and Hyderabad, Bangalore offers the best quality of housing for the price.

“Today if you want a proper condominium, Bangalore has some of the best. You can live in Whitefield at Rs 50,000 a month. You can live in something for Rs 100,000 or Rs 200,000. But you do not need to pay Rs 300,000 to Rs 400,000 to live in a great apartment.”

In Mumbai, he said, Rs 300,000 a month is the floor for a quality home in the right area. In Gurgaon, good amenities come at a serious premium. On capital values, Bangalore still trades at Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per square foot for Grade A product, a range that is very difficult to find in Delhi, impossible in Mumbai.

The weather helps. The talent concentration creates quality options across price points. And the sheer volume of high-quality development over the last two decades means buyers and renters have genuine choice.

Hyderabad is catching up quickly. Pune should have been as big as Bangalore but did not quite fulfill that potential. Mumbai’s infrastructure investments, particularly the coastal road project, are going to revive parts of the city that have been dormant for decades.

“If Mumbai continues to build on the infrastructure they are building, it is going to be a game changer. Areas in Mumbai that died are going to revive now.”

Part 6: The Brookfield Deal That Changed Everything

During COVID, when the rest of the country was in various stages of paralysis, RMZ closed what was at the time India’s largest real estate transaction. Roughly 12.8 million square feet sold to Brookfield for approximately $2 billion.

Thirumal was careful to credit the broader team and the promoters’ vision for making it happen. But he explained the logic clearly.

RMZ had built approximately 25 to 27 million square feet of portfolio over five years, including delivering seven and a half million square feet in Bangalore alone in three and a half years. That was significant leverage. The debt was being serviced by rental income, which was healthy because RMZ’s tenant quality was exceptional.

“During COVID, we did not lose any rental. Everybody paid on time. That was because of the quality of clients we had. If you did not take the right client with the right balance sheet, people suffered because clients stopped paying. Our quality of tenants was so good, nobody stopped paying.”

The deal was not driven by distress. It was driven by strategic vision. De-leveraging through the Brookfield transaction gave RMZ the capital to expand nationally. They bought land in Mumbai. Closed deals in Pune. Acquired a property in Delhi.

“We went from a South India dominant player to a national player. That was the whole idea. Today we have developed 70 million square feet and we are developing more.”

The portfolio sold was also largely a decade-old portfolio. The deal allowed RMZ to take mature assets off the balance sheet and redeploy capital into new development cycles.

Part 7: Why Developers Go Bankrupt and Why Most Opacity Is Self-Inflicted

The opacity problem in Indian real estate is real. The public distrust of developers is real. Thirumal does not dispute this.

What he disputes is the generalization.

“Every business, every industry has its black sheep. Today you can stand up and say these are the 20 developers in the country. If you go to them, you will get what they told you. Why are the large 10 to 12 developers doing 70 to 80 percent of the business? Because of the trust they have built over the years.”

The failure pattern he has observed consistently follows the same arc. A developer gets ambitious, takes on more projects than their financial discipline can support, fails to build the right sales organization, cannot move inventory, and collapses under leverage when the market turns or an external shock arrives.

“It is not that everybody starts the business saying I am going to con you. Sometimes bad things happen. Financial discipline is not there. Location does not work. You can have events like COVID or a financial crisis. But if your discipline is right and you can work through those headwinds, you will deliver.”

His benchmark for healthy construction leverage: around 65 percent debt to 35 percent equity on construction financing. Beyond that, the math becomes unforgiving when anything goes wrong.

The maintenance point is one most people overlook. Value in real estate compounds with maintenance. Buildings that are well-maintained command a premium even as they age. Buildings that are neglected destroy the wealth of everyone who owns within them.

“If you do not reinvest in your asset, you are losing generational value. You are not planning for the next 10, 15 years, you will fail.”

Part 8: Starting in Real Estate With Zero Money

For the 25-year-old watching who wants to build something in real estate, Thirumal’s advice is both more accessible and more demanding than people expect.

More accessible: people have started real estate with zero money. The barriers are real but not absolute. Land, approvals, government relationships, agency navigation: these are significant hurdles, not permanent walls.

More demanding: you have to go all in.

“If you are working for somebody, give them 150 percent. They are paying your salary. You work for them. You cannot give them 80 percent and put 20 percent somewhere else. You can have hobbies. Entrepreneurship is not a hobby.”

He distinguishes between two things: having an entrepreneurial mindset, and being willing to risk everything. Both are required. Neither alone is sufficient.

The first signals that you see opportunities where others see problems, that you can build and sell and execute. The second signals that you are prepared for the five to ten year minimum incubation period before real estate ventures start to show durable returns.

“Any business, you need to be at it for at least five years for it to succeed. Short-term wins are there, but there is risk. If you cannot handle risk, you cannot become an entrepreneur.”

His most honest observation on what actually makes or breaks entrepreneurial ventures: it is the unit, not the individual.

“Entrepreneurship is not about the individual, it is about the unit. The family is very important. If every time you come back and the family says we are going through so much pain because you want to be an entrepreneur but we are not, that will break you. The whole unit has to work together. Even then, it is not a guarantee. But at least you have a chance to fight.”

The One Thing

If there is a single idea running through everything Thirumal said, it is this:

Real estate is a long-cycle trust business. The developers who last are not the ones who build the most or leverage the most or close the flashiest deals. They are the ones who build quality, maintain it, serve clients through multiple cycles, and never let short-term opportunity override long-term discipline.

India’s commercial real estate market has already proven it can absorb 80 million square feet in a year. The question for the next generation of developers is not whether demand exists. Demand exists at a scale that is genuinely staggering.

The question is whether you are building something that will still be relevant in 15 years. Because if you are not thinking about that, you will not be.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube: