Kunal Mehra and the advisory architecture bridging institutional capital to India's mid-market real estate platforms

India's real estate sector is undergoing a structural realignment. The flow of capital is shifting direction, the profile of investable platforms is broadening, and the intermediary architecture connecting the two is becoming a decisive competitive advantage. At the center of this transformation sits a category of advisory professionals whose strategic importance has grown in direct proportion to the institutionalization of mid-market developers.

Kunal Mehra, Co-CEO & President of Table Space, represents one dimension of this evolving landscape. His platform manages a portfolio of 10.5 million sq. ft. of custom enterprise workspaces across more than 75 centers in India, a scale that positions Table Space at the intersection of commercial real estate operations and institutional capital requirements. The broader thesis, however, extends well beyond any single executive. It concerns the emergence of a full advisory ecosystem that is engineering access to institutional capital for developers who sit between family-led Tier-2 players and publicly listed platforms.

This mid-market segment is the fastest-growing frontier of institutionalization in Indian real estate. And the advisors, capital allocators, and platform builders shaping it deserve dedicated strategic analysis.

Why has domestic institutional capital overtaken foreign investment in Indian real estate?

The most consequential shift in India's real estate capital markets is the decisive pivot toward domestic institutional capital. According to JLL, institutional investments in India's real estate sector reached USD 4.4 billion in the first half of 2026, a 25% increase compared to H1 2025. More significantly, domestic institutional capital accounted for a record 63% share of total real estate investment flows during H1 2026, marking a definitive move away from the foreign capital dominance that characterized the previous decade.

This is a structural change with profound implications for the advisory industry. When foreign capital dominated Indian real estate, advisory intermediaries served primarily as cross-border translators, bridging regulatory gaps, cultural differences, and information asymmetries between global investors and local developers. The rise of domestic capital reconfigures the advisory function entirely. Indian institutional investors, whether insurance companies, pension funds, domestic alternative investment funds, or family offices, possess local market knowledge but often lack the deal-structuring capability and governance assessment frameworks needed to underwrite mid-market platforms.

The advisory layer that emerges to serve this domestic capital wave looks fundamentally different from the cross-border advisory model. It is less about jurisdictional navigation and more about governance engineering, portfolio construction, and risk calibration for platforms that are institutionalizing in real time.

Amit Goenka, Founder and Chairman of Nisus Finance, operates precisely in this space. Nisus Finance manages real estate and urban infrastructure capital in a market where, according to GRI Institute coverage, domestic capital dominated Q2 2026 investments at 54%. Goenka's trajectory, from media sector leadership to real estate capital management, illustrates a broader pattern: the advisory ecosystem attracting cross-sector talent capable of applying institutional disciplines from other industries to real estate's governance gaps.

Who are the advisory architects enabling mid-market developer institutionalization?

The mid-market developer segment in India occupies a strategic position that is simultaneously the most promising and the most underserved. These developers, typically with portfolios between 2 and 10 million sq. ft. and revenues that place them below listed platform thresholds but well above informal operators, represent the bulk of India's housing and commercial construction pipeline. India will need approximately 93 million additional urban homes by 2036, according to ET Edge Insights, as urban residents are expected to constitute nearly 40% of the population by 2030. Mid-market developers will deliver a substantial portion of this stock.

Yet institutional capital has historically bypassed this segment. The governance standards, financial reporting quality, and organizational structures of mid-market developers have traditionally fallen below institutional thresholds. The advisory architecture now forming around this segment addresses these gaps through a combination of governance consulting, capital structuring, and platform-level strategic design.

Several figures within the GRI Institute community illustrate distinct nodes in this architecture. Sachin Bhanushali's transition from logistics to real estate capital exemplifies how cross-sector expertise is enriching the advisory talent pool, bringing supply chain discipline and operational efficiency frameworks to real estate platform building. Ami Momaya's appointment as Managing Director and Head of Infrastructure for India at Blackstone, the firm's first dedicated infrastructure hire in the Asia-Pacific region, signals that even the largest global allocators recognize the need for specialized, on-the-ground advisory capacity to access India's infrastructure opportunity.

These appointments and career trajectories are symptoms of a deeper structural phenomenon. The institutionalization of mid-market real estate in India requires an advisory layer that can perform three distinct functions simultaneously: upgrading developer governance to institutional standards, structuring capital products that match domestic institutional risk appetites, and building operational platforms that generate the predictable cash flows institutional investors require.

Table Space's model under Kunal Mehra's leadership offers one template. By aggregating enterprise workspace demand across 75+ centers and managing it through a centralized platform, the company creates the kind of scale, standardization, and cash flow predictability that institutional capital seeks. The advisory insight embedded in this approach is clear: mid-market players can access institutional capital by building platform-level operating models rather than competing on individual asset quality alone.

What regulatory framework supports mid-market institutionalization?

The regulatory environment in India has evolved considerably to support the institutionalization thesis. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA) continues to serve as the foundational framework for transparency and project governance, establishing baseline compliance standards that make institutional underwriting of developer platforms feasible. RERA's impact on mid-market developers has been particularly significant, as it imposes governance disciplines that were previously voluntary, effectively raising the institutional readiness of the entire sector.

The 2025-26 amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) introduce further institutional safeguards. The new Debtor-in-Possession model for real estate developers allows distressed projects to continue under developer management with institutional oversight, rather than forcing liquidation. The Group Insolvency framework prevents asset stripping across subsidiaries, a risk that has historically deterred institutional capital from engaging with developer groups that operate through complex corporate structures. These amendments directly address the structural concerns that have kept institutional investors away from mid-market platforms.

Taken together, RERA and the IBC amendments create a regulatory architecture that reduces the governance risk premium institutional investors attach to mid-market developers. The advisory professionals who understand how to position developer platforms within this regulatory framework hold significant strategic value.

The trillion-dollar context

India's real estate market is expected to represent USD 1 trillion by 2030, according to Chambers and Partners, driven by government initiatives and institutional investments. Reaching this milestone requires capital to flow beyond the top 15-20 listed developers and into the mid-market platforms that will deliver the majority of new supply.

The advisory architecture enabling this capital flow is becoming a critical piece of market infrastructure. It operates at the intersection of capital markets expertise, developer operations, regulatory navigation, and governance engineering. The professionals building this architecture, from Kunal Mehra's platform-level approach at Table Space to Amit Goenka's capital management at Nisus Finance, from Ami Momaya's institutional infrastructure mandate at Blackstone to the cross-sector advisory talent entering the market, collectively represent a new professional category in Indian real estate.

This category does not yet have a settled name. Some call it advisory architecture. Others describe it as capital access engineering. Whatever the terminology, its strategic importance is undeniable. The domestic institutional capital surge of 2026, with 63% of flows coming from Indian sources according to JLL, has made the advisory bridge between institutional capital and mid-market developers the most consequential intermediary function in the sector.

GRI Institute's India real estate community has tracked this evolution through its events and research initiatives, bringing together the capital allocators, advisory professionals, and developer platforms that constitute this ecosystem. The conversations within this community increasingly focus on the governance, structural, and operational requirements that mid-market developers must meet to access institutional capital, and on the advisory professionals enabling that transition.

The next phase of Indian real estate growth will be determined by the quality and sophistication of this advisory layer. The capital is available. The demand is immense. The regulatory framework is maturing. The remaining variable is the advisory architecture that connects these elements into investable opportunities. Those who build it will shape the trajectory of a trillion-dollar market.