Flexibility Is the New Stability

Flexibility Is the New Stability

India’s enterprises are planning for growth on a shorter horizon than the leases they sign. Teams, locations and operating needs can change long before an office agreement ends. A stable workplace strategy therefore needs the freedom to adapt.

This edition looks at why enterprises are choosing managed workplaces, the operating responsibilities a lease leaves out, and how Ortellis brings a workplace, its team and the systems behind it into one framework.

Flexible space is outgrowing the market

India’s office market leased about 43 million sq ft in the first half of 2026. Within that market, flex operators leased a record 8.4 million sq ft, up from 5.4 million a year earlier—growth of 55%. Their share of all leasing rose from 13% to nearly 20%, while more than 191,000 flex seats were taken up, the segment’s strongest first half on record. [1]

Much of that demand came from Global Capability Centers. GCCs accounted for 44% of flex seats, compared with 37% across 2025. These are enterprises building substantial, long-term teams while retaining flexibility in the way they occupy space. Bengaluru remained the largest flex market, with 30% of seats, while Delhi NCR and Mumbai more than doubled their flex leasing. [1]

Hyderabad showed the same momentum. GCCs drove 45% of record first-half leasing and rents rose 7%. Flex seat take-up more than doubled, with the Hyderabad market comparison recording growth of 171%. [1, 2] Across the top eight cities, vacancy stood at 13.85%. [3]

Ambition is rising faster than certainty

The planning horizon is shorter than the typical lease. Colliers’ occupier guide places a typical Indian office lease at five to nine years. [5] Yet CBRE’s 2026 survey found that 77% of occupiers expected their India portfolios to grow within two years. Thirty percent were aiming for a significantly larger footprint, nearly double the share a year earlier. [4]

The move toward flex was already visible in earlier expectations. In 2024, CBRE projected that 58% of occupiers would run more than a tenth of their portfolios as flexible space by 2026, up from 42%. [6] Separately, 67% of GCCs planned to use more flex space. [7]

Location adds another layer of uncertainty. Seventy percent of occupiers weighed commute infrastructure in their decisions, 95% saw traffic as a threat to operations, and 65% of those considering Tier II and III cities cited access to emerging talent. [4] A stable operation therefore needs room to adjust: to put the right team in the right place as the plan changes.

The invisible scope a lease never lists

The visible cost of a workplace is only the beginning. Cushman & Wakefield’s 2026 fit-out guide puts a collaborative hybrid workplace in India at ₹5,847 to ₹6,567 per sq ft. At the lower end of that range, a 50,000 sq ft floor starts near ₹29 crore before its first employee is seated. This is an illustrative calculation; the actual cost varies with specification. India remains the most cost-competitive fit-out market in Asia Pacific in the comparison, at US$65–73 per sq ft against about US$140 in Singapore. [8]

A quotation may show rent and common area maintenance charges, plus 18% GST, alongside a fit-out rate per sq ft. It does not describe the leadership attention required to find and onboard vendors, manage execution, accommodate shifting lead times, and coordinate daily services. Quality and compliance checks continue after the build. Facility and administrative staff may join the company’s payroll, followed by a management layer to run them. [8]

Scale affects the economics of that work. A mid-sized operation buys services at relatively low volume while carrying fixed overhead across functions. In Knight Frank India’s Hyderabad comparison, facility management cost a small office ₹23.5 per sq ft and a large campus ₹12.6—close to twice as much for the smaller office. [9] Establishing a GCC independently typically takes nine to eighteen months. [10]

The growing role of partners reflects this wider operating burden. Everest Group’s 2024 assessment put partner-led setups at 40% of new GCC establishments in India, up from under 10%. [11] The decision extends beyond who supplies a floor to who takes responsibility for getting the operation running.

A flagship community, with services at shared scale

Ortellis’s approach starts with a flagship property: SAS iTower in Hyderabad. It is intended for large enterprise mandates, keeping teams together on connected floors inside one community, with a common standard of operations and floors customized to global workplace standards.

The operating rationale is aggregation. GEP reports savings of 8–15% in North America and 5–12% in EMEA when organizations consolidate fragmented facility services. [12] Knight Frank India’s assessment found facility management costs per sq ft on large campuses were nearly half those of small offices across Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurugram. [9] These are reported results from those comparisons, not savings commitments from Ortellis.

Shared scale matters particularly to mid-market GCCs: organizations large enough to need an enterprise-grade workplace, but often too small to operate one efficiently on their own. Zinnov and Nasscom’s 2025 report counted more than 480 mid-market GCCs, around 27% of the landscape covered by that report. [13]

The building is also the smaller part of a capability centre’s cost. EY’s India GCC benchmark puts workforce at about 85% of cost per employee. [14] Hiring, compensation and retention shape the economics, while bringing teams together gives culture a place to develop. This edition reports that only 23% of Indian employees were engaged in 2025, the lowest level in four years. The workplace and the way it is run belong in the same conversation as the people it serves.

At work from day one, with a custom floor to follow

India hosts 2,117 GCCs employing 2.36 million professionals, and 506 Forbes Global 2000 companies run operations from the country. [7] GCCs leased about 16.5 million sq ft in the first half of 2026, representing 38% of all office leasing in India. In Mumbai’s prime business districts, vacancy was below 3%. [15]

Behind each lease is a team expected to become productive quickly. Design, approvals, vendor selection, construction, furniture and technology stand between an agreement and a seated team. With vacancy at 13.85% across the top eight cities, there is little margin to absorb delays. [3]

Launchpad is Ortellis’s response for teams that choose it. While a customized floor is being built, a team can move into a fully equipped incubation space inside the flagship and begin work from day one. Desks, meeting rooms, connectivity and daily services are available there, so hiring and onboarding need not wait for the contractor.

The sequence has three stages. In Plan, Ortellis studies the team, its culture and objectives, then develops a workplace plan, fit-out design and move-in timeline. In Launch, teams that choose Launchpad move in, connect and begin work from day one. In Land, the custom floor is ready within 90 days, with the same setup, access and services for the move.

One partner, three ways to work

A capability centre needs an entity, a team, a workplace and the systems to run them. Ortellis brings those needs together through one contract, one operating standard and one accountable team, supported by a platform that combines infrastructure and technology. That technology supports the facilities, partnerships and operations, giving clients visibility into the operation.

The offering has three engagement models:

• Managed Offices: a fully managed workplace, with the option to begin in Launchpad before moving to a customized floor in the flagship, operated by Ortellis.

• Global Capability Centers: a dedicated centre run on the client’s behalf, bringing entity, talent, workplace and operations into one programme.

• Services: a scoped project, managed team or delivery centre, measured against agreed outcomes.

Five capabilities support those models. Research & Advisory sets the plan; Workplace & Community prepares the place; Talent & Culture builds the team; Finance & Compliance runs the entity; and Technology & Consulting delivers the work. The Ortellis platform provides the infrastructure and technology beneath them.

For GCCs, Ortellis holds itself to a stated standard of becoming operational in 90 days.

The people and the idea behind Ortellis

The name combines ortus, Latin for a rising, with a trellis: a structure that supports growth without constraining its shape. The idea is to connect the right people, places and operating systems from the beginning.

Four founders bring more than 70 years of combined experience across technology, commercial real estate, global banking and enterprise operations.

Ankita Sinha, Co-founder, Operations & People, is a TISS graduate with more than fifteen years across technology, government and the social sector. She helped scale a global technology services firm from fewer than ten people to more than 1,500.

Abhishek Gupta, Co-founder, Managed Offices & Finance, is an IIM Lucknow graduate with more than twenty years across mergers and acquisitions and commercial real estate. He brings the discipline of a transaction to workplace planning and the care of a host to its operation.

Mohini Chawla, Co-founder, Sales & Business Development, is an IIM Lucknow graduate with more than twenty years in global banking and enterprise operations at Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo. Her experience includes moving teams from vendor arrangements to captive GCCs.

Manish Kumar, Co-founder, Technology & Delivery, has spent more than fifteen years building product and services companies, R&D centres and AI centres of excellence. He has founded and built technology and services operations across multiple regions.

That combination underpins the Ortellis proposition: a framework around the workplace, the team and the operation, built to support the ambition that brings them together. To begin a conversation, visit ortellis.com or write to hello@ortellis.com.

Sources and notes

Market figures and comparisons below are the sources cited in the final edition. Their dates, scopes and qualifications are retained above.

1. Cushman & Wakefield, India Flex Space, H1 2026.

2. Knight Frank India, Hyderabad office market, H1 2026.

3. Cushman & Wakefield, India Office MarketBeat, Q1 2026.

4. CBRE, India Office Occupier Survey 2026.

5. Colliers, Global Occupier Guide: India; typical lease term of five to nine years.

6. CBRE, India Office Occupier Survey 2024. The 2026 flex-portfolio figure is a projection reported in 2024.

7. Awfis and Zinnov, India GCC report, August 2026.

8. Cushman & Wakefield, Asia Pacific Office Fit Out Cost Guide 2026; Colliers, Global Occupier Guide: India. The ₹29 crore example uses 50,000 sq ft × ₹5,847; actual fit-out cost varies with specification.

9. Knight Frank India, facility management cost assessment across eight cities, May 2026. Costs and comparisons retain the geographic scopes stated in the edition.

10. The Intech Group, GCC implementation timeline in India, 2026.

11. Everest Group, Global In-house Center setup in India, 2024.

12. GEP, Unified Facilities Management Bulletin. Reported consolidation savings are not Ortellis commitments.

13. Zinnov and Nasscom, mid-market GCC report, 2025.

14. EY, India GCC cost benchmarking study.

15. Cushman & Wakefield, India Office MarketBeat, Q2 2026. Zinnov and Nasscom, India GCC Landscape Report FY26, is also cited for this section’s market context.