Ananya Mittal and the next-generation capital architecture reshaping India's real estate investment landscape

A structural shift in who builds India's real estate capital stack

India's real estate market is projected to reach $970 billion by 2030, a three-fold increase from an estimated $290 billion in 2025, according to KPMG-NAREDCO. The sheer scale of that trajectory demands a recalibration of how capital is sourced, structured, and deployed. The leaders driving this recalibration are neither legacy developers nor global fund managers parachuting into Mumbai. They are a generation of institutional operators embedded in the market's connective tissue, building platforms that link logistics infrastructure, enterprise workspace demand, and cross-border investment channels into a coherent capital architecture.

Ananya Mittal, Chief Strategy Officer at Arshiya Limited, exemplifies this shift. Her work in logistics real estate and Free Trade Warehousing Zones (FTWZs) positions her at the intersection of supply chain infrastructure and institutional-grade asset creation. Amit Goenka, MD & CEO of Nisus Finance, is engineering platform-level joint ventures that connect capital pools between Dubai and India. Kunal Mehra, Co-CEO of Table Space, is scaling enterprise workspaces to meet the explosive demand from Global Capability Centres. Sachin Bhanushali, CEO of Gateway Rail Freight, is bridging logistics infrastructure with Middle Eastern capital.

Together, these figures represent a decisive move away from the developer-centric model that defined Indian real estate for decades. The market is entering an era where value creation depends on operational platforms, regulatory fluency, and the ability to architect capital flows across borders and asset classes.

Who is Ananya Mittal and why does her role at Arshiya Limited matter for institutional investors?

Arshiya Limited operates some of India's most strategically positioned logistics and FTWZ assets, creating a direct link between trade infrastructure and real estate value. In a market where warehousing and logistics parks have rapidly evolved from cost-centre afterthoughts into core institutional allocations, Ananya Mittal's position as Chief Strategy Officer places her at the centre of a critical transformation.

FTWZs offer a distinct proposition: they function as deemed foreign territory for trade purposes, enabling duty deferment, re-export flexibility, and consolidated distribution. For institutional investors seeking exposure to India's manufacturing and export ambitions, FTWZ real estate represents an asset class with built-in regulatory moats and long-duration cash flow characteristics. Mittal's strategic mandate involves scaling these platforms to attract the kind of institutional capital that has historically concentrated in office and residential sectors.

The significance extends beyond a single company. India's logistics real estate segment is undergoing rapid institutionalization, driven by e-commerce penetration, manufacturing policy incentives, and the government's push to reduce logistics costs as a percentage of GDP. Leaders like Mittal, who combine strategic vision with deep operational understanding of trade-linked infrastructure, are becoming essential counterparties for global allocators looking to deploy capital into India's physical economy.

Within the GRI Institute community, conversations about next-generation leaders in Indian real estate increasingly centre on figures who operate at the boundary between infrastructure and investment. Mittal belongs firmly in this cohort.

How are GCC expansion and regulatory reform creating a new institutional playbook?

The numbers are unambiguous. Global Capability Centres leased 19.2 million square feet of office space across India's top seven cities in the first half of 2026, accounting for 45 per cent of total gross office leasing, according to Anarock. India's office sector as a whole absorbed a record 45.5 million square feet in the same period, as reported by CBRE. The Indian GCC market is projected to reach $100 to $110 billion by 2030, according to ET Realty.

This is the demand engine that leaders like Kunal Mehra are building against. Table Space aims to expand its managed enterprise workspace portfolio to 30 million square feet by 2030, according to Mint, a target calibrated directly to the GCC expansion wave. The enterprise workspace model differs fundamentally from conventional co-working. It delivers bespoke, technology-integrated environments for multinational occupiers who require security compliance, data sovereignty, and operational continuity. GCCs represent the most creditworthy tenant base in Indian commercial real estate, and the platforms that serve them are becoming institutional assets in their own right.

On the regulatory front, two developments in 2026 have reshaped the capital architecture. SEBI's amendment to mutual fund regulations, effective January 2026, reclassifies REITs as equity instruments for mutual funds and Specialized Investment Funds. This single change has the potential to dramatically widen the domestic investor base for listed real estate vehicles, improving liquidity and reducing the cost of capital for REIT sponsors. The reclassification signals SEBI's intent to position REITs as mainstream allocation instruments rather than niche alternatives.

The Reserve Bank of India's Third Amendment Directions of 2026, effective from October, introduce stricter lending norms for banks financing REITs and InvITs. At least 80 per cent of the underlying real estate assets must generate positive cash flows for over a year. This regulation rewards operational maturity and penalises speculative structuring. For leaders building platform businesses around stabilised, cash-flow-generating assets, these norms are a competitive advantage rather than a constraint.

The regulatory environment is maturing in a direction that favours institutional operators over speculative developers. This is the structural context in which Mittal, Goenka, Mehra, and Bhanushali are building their platforms.

What role do cross-border capital corridors play in India's next real estate cycle?

Amit Goenka's work at Nisus Finance illustrates one of the most consequential trends in Indian real estate: the emergence of structured capital corridors connecting the Gulf and India. Platform-level joint ventures, in which a domestic operating partner and a foreign capital partner share governance and risk across a portfolio of assets, have become the preferred vehicle for Middle Eastern investors seeking exposure to Indian real estate without the execution risk of direct development.

Sachin Bhanushali's role at Gateway Rail Freight adds another dimension. Logistics infrastructure, particularly rail-connected freight terminals and inland container depots, has attracted significant interest from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and family offices. The asset class offers inflation-linked revenue streams, long concession periods, and alignment with India's national logistics policy. Bhanushali's ability to connect this infrastructure story with capital from the Gulf creates a distinct investment proposition that traditional real estate intermediaries cannot replicate.

The Dubai-India corridor is particularly active. Indian real estate developers and infrastructure operators have established a sustained presence in Dubai's financial ecosystem, and Gulf-based investors have grown comfortable with Indian regulatory and tax structures. The result is a two-way flow of capital and expertise that is reshaping deal origination, structuring, and governance standards across the Indian market.

GRI Institute has observed this dynamic across its member community, where cross-border capital formation is now a standing theme in discussions among senior leaders from both regions. The institutionalization of these corridors is accelerating, and the leaders profiled here are among its primary architects.

The platform era in Indian real estate

The common thread connecting Ananya Mittal, Amit Goenka, Kunal Mehra, and Sachin Bhanushali is their commitment to platform-level value creation. Each operates at a different node of the real estate and infrastructure value chain, yet all share a conviction that the next phase of Indian real estate growth will be captured by operators who build scalable, institutionally governed platforms rather than by those who pursue opportunistic, deal-by-deal strategies.

India's trajectory toward a $970 billion real estate market by 2030 will be shaped by regulatory maturation, GCC-driven demand, logistics modernisation, and the deepening of cross-border capital relationships. The leaders who define this era will be those who can integrate these forces into coherent investment platforms.

The market rewards operational depth, regulatory fluency, and the capacity to serve institutional capital's demand for transparency, governance, and predictable cash flows. This is the architecture that the next generation is building, and it will determine which segments of Indian real estate attract the deepest pools of long-term capital.

For GRI Institute members tracking India's institutional evolution, these are the names and the themes that will define the market's next chapter. The capital architecture is being rebuilt, and the blueprints are already visible.