ANAROCK’s H1 2026 report confirms a structural supply crunch — and the story of who built this industry is as compelling as the numbers themselves – S. Shriram, Editor-in-Chief, Retail Updates
India operates approximately 650 shopping malls with combined leasable area exceeding 200 million sq ft — yet Grade A supply remains chronically, structurally insufficient.
Real Estate Consulting firm ANAROCK’s H1 2026 data proclaims retailers leased 4.1 million sq ft of Grade A space in India as against just 0.9 million sq ft of new completions — a demand-to-supply ratio of nearly 4.5 times.
Grade A mall vacancy fell to a 16-year low of 6.7 per cent in H1 2026, reversing sharply from the post-pandemic peak of 15.5 per cent in 2021.
No conversation about India’s organised mall market is complete without acknowledging its founding act: Prestige Group’s Forum Mall at Koramangala, Bengaluru, which opened in 2004 as India’s first truly organised mall.
Prestige sold seven Forum Mall assets — totalling 4.4 million sq ft — to Blackstone in 2021 for approximately ₹9,000 crore; Blackstone subsequently rebranded the entire acquired portfolio as Nexus Malls in July 2022.
Prestige retained the Forum brand and has since rebuilt its mall business from the ground up — with Forum Kochi, new Forum centres in Mysore and Mangalore, and 8 million sq ft currently under construction across Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad.
Nexus Select Trust — India’s only listed retail REIT — now operates 19 malls across 15 cities with 10.7 million sq ft of GLA, independently targeting 30 malls and 20 million sq ft within four years.
Phoenix Mills, DLF, Lakeshore, Raheja Group, and Pacific collectively pipeline 42.5 million sq ft of fresh Grade A supply, as over 88 international brands actively hunt for quality retail addresses across India.
Grade B and C standalone malls face an existential reckoning – Tex Valley at Erode and several hundred independent assets across India have an abysmal 20-25% occupancy, literally forcing the promoters to rethink the usage of such premises – most of these investors / families remain undecided to invest further or to resort to mixed-use development, for want of not getting desired yields.
GenZ and millennials however, are crowding into Grade A malls across top metro cities and Tier 1 cities from Coimbatore to Indore, Guwahati to Ahmedabad like never before — nearly 40 per cent of new mall space is now reserved for F&B, wellness, and entertainment, the categories this generation lives in.
India’s mall market is the world’s most exciting retail real estate story at the moment — and with institutional capital, iconic brands, and a billion-strong consuming population, the very best is yet to come.
Editor’s Note
The ANAROCK data validates what every serious retailer has known for three years: the battle for prime retail real estate in India is not fought at the leasing desk — it is won or lost five years earlier, at the land acquisition and approvals stage, which is where most developers blink.
Prestige Group’s Forum story is a masterclass that the industry has not yet fully decoded — they sold ₹9,000 crore worth of assets to Blackstone, watched those same assets get rebranded as Nexus, and then quietly rebuilt Forum from scratch; the brand outlasted the buildings, which tells you exactly where the real value in Indian retail real estate resides.
The next five years will not belong to developers who count square feet — they will belong to operators who engineer experiences, and on that measure, India’s mall sector is just getting started.
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