Dream11 leases 1.2 lakh sq. ft office space in One BKC from Nucleus Office Parks

Fantasy sports platform Dream11 has entered into an agreement with private equity major Blackstone Group-entity Nucleus Office Parks to pick up two entire floors spread over 120,000 sq ft on lease at One BKC in Mumbai’s business district  (BKC), said two people with direct knowledge of the development. The company is planning to shift its headquarters from Lower Parel to this new office address. The tenure of the lease will be five years along with an option to extend the term by an additional five years at mark-to-market rent revision. The online gaming company will be paying monthly lease rentals of over Rs 300 per sq ft, taking the annual payout to Rs 43 crore. With this, for the first five years itself, the company will be paying a total rental of over Rs 216 crore. “The deal has been finalised and a letter of intent for the same has been issued,” said one of the persons mentioned above. Both Dream11 and Nucleus Office Parks declined to comment. The company has been in the news over the last few days as it has suspended its operations in Karnataka while it battles complaints alleging violation of the newly-implemented gaming ban in Karnataka. Dream11 has maintained that the company is compliant with all the laws. After witnessing a sluggish pace of leasing for over a year due to the pandemic, lease transactions for large office spaces have started to gain momentum across key property markets. “Mumbai's premier office market, BKC—the new CBD (PL SPELL)—has witnessed a 129% on year growth in net absorption in year-to-date 2021,” said Gautam Saraf, MD-Mumbai and New Business at Cushman & Wakefield. “Interestingly, while overall office rents in the city had corrected marginally by 3% from pre-pandemic levels, BKC rents remained stable. With a large concentration of assets owned by established developers, the market is poised for overarching recovery in coming quarters.” Steady economic recovery, aggressive vaccination drives and increasing number of companies planning return of workforces to offices is helping the market recover from slumber. The July-September quarter has already witnessed a sharp uptick in absorption of office spaces led by leasing activity in the information technology and IT-enabled services sector. Office leasing for the quarter witnessed an over 2.6 times growth at 12.5 million sq ft across eight key property markets of India, showed a recent Knight Frank India report. With this, the total office real estate transactions have reached 83% of the pre-pandemic level quarterly average witnessed in 2019.