Warehousing absorption edges up to 34.8 million sq ft, with Pune and Mumbai near the front

India's industrial and logistics sector absorbed 34.8 million sq ft in the first half of 2026, up 2.4 per cent year-on-year, according to a Savills India report released on July 2. Manufacturing occupiers drove 30 per cent of demand and third-party logistics another 23 per cent, with FMCG and consumer durables at 18 per cent and e-commerce at 10 per cent.

Geographically, Delhi-NCR led with close to a fifth of national absorption, but Pune (17 per cent) and Mumbai (16 per cent) together accounted for roughly a third — making Maharashtra the single largest state cluster for warehousing demand. Fresh supply nationally reached 42.7 million sq ft, 86 per cent of it in Tier-1 cities. Notably, Grade-A space took 59 per cent of absorption, up from 55 per cent a year earlier, as occupiers prioritise compliance, quality and ESG standards.

For the MMR, this is the Bhiwandi–Panvel belt story, with Pune's Chakan–Talegaon arc close behind: the port, airport and expressway build-out keeps pulling big-box demand to the region's rim, where large contiguous land is the real constraint. The steady shift toward Grade-A parks also matters for owners of older godown stock, as organised parks increasingly set the market's rent and specification benchmarks.

The sector's momentum is broad rather than spectacular — low single-digit growth on a high base — but the quality upgrade cycle underneath it looks durable.