Mihir Nerurkar and the institutional operator blueprint reshaping India's real estate asset management

India's real estate sector is entering a phase of institutional maturation that demands a different kind of leadership. The market no longer rewards capital deployment alone. It rewards operational precision, asset-level transformation, and the capacity to build scalable platforms across complex, regulation-heavy environments. Mihir Nerurkar, Managing Director and Operating Partner in Brookfield's Infrastructure group for India, exemplifies this emerging archetype: the institutional operator whose value lies in turning deployed capital into performing, resilient portfolios.

The numbers frame the magnitude of the shift. Institutional investments in India's real estate sector reached $4.3 billion in H1 2026, a 23% year-over-year increase, according to JLL. Domestic investors contributed a record 64% of total institutional real estate capital during the same period, signaling that Indian institutions now possess both the conviction and the capacity to anchor large-scale platforms without relying predominantly on foreign capital. Within this flow, data centers emerged as the second-largest recipient of institutional capital in Q2 2026, accounting for 40% of total investments, per Cushman & Wakefield.

These are structural shifts. They require leaders who can operate at the intersection of infrastructure engineering, financial structuring, and regulatory navigation. Nerurkar's positioning within Brookfield's infrastructure apparatus places him squarely at that intersection.

Who is Mihir Nerurkar and what role does he play in India's institutional real estate transformation?

Mihir Nerurkar serves as Managing Director and Operating Partner in Brookfield's Infrastructure group for India, where he oversees operations of infrastructure assets across the firm's Indian portfolio. His profile represents a category of executive increasingly central to how global platforms translate capital commitments into operational reality on the ground.

Brookfield's infrastructure strategy in India spans renewable energy, data infrastructure, logistics, and transportation, sectors where operational complexity is high and regulatory environments shift frequently. The operating partner model, which Nerurkar embodies, places accountability for asset performance directly within the investment team rather than delegating it to external management. This integration of operations and capital allocation is becoming the standard for institutional platforms that seek long-term returns in India's infrastructure landscape.

The relevance of this operational blueprint extends beyond any single firm. Across the Indian market, global platforms are building dedicated in-country operational leadership structures. Ami Momaya was appointed as Managing Director and Head of Infrastructure for India at Blackstone in 2026, launching the firm's infrastructure platform in the country, according to reporting by The Economic Times. The parallel between Brookfield's established infrastructure operations under leaders like Nerurkar and Blackstone's decision to create a dedicated infrastructure vertical under Momaya illustrates a clear industry-wide pattern: operational leadership at the country level is now a prerequisite for institutional-scale infrastructure investment in India.

Institutional real estate in India has evolved from a capital-allocation exercise into an operations-intensive discipline where value creation depends on platform-level execution.

How are institutional operators building scalable platforms across Indian real estate and infrastructure?

The institutional operator model materializes differently across asset classes, but the underlying logic remains consistent. Capital alone does not create value in Indian real estate and infrastructure. Value emerges from the ability to standardize operations, navigate regulatory complexity, and integrate technology into asset management at scale.

Consider the logistics sector. Hemant Prabhu serves as Chief Operating Officer of Industrial & Logistics at Hiranandani Group's Greenbase platform, a joint venture with Blackstone. The industrial and logistics segment has attracted sustained institutional interest as India's manufacturing and e-commerce ecosystems expand. Operating a logistics portfolio at institutional scale in India requires managing land acquisition processes, environmental clearances, tenant relationships across multiple states, and compliance with evolving goods and services tax frameworks. The COO function in this context is a strategic role that determines whether a portfolio achieves institutional-grade performance or remains a collection of disparate assets.

In the commercial workspace segment, Kunal Mehra serves as President and Co-CEO of Table Space, overseeing tech-led workspace solutions and commercial real estate operations. Table Space represents a model where technology integration is the operational differentiator, embedding smart building systems, occupancy analytics, and enterprise-grade digital infrastructure into workspace delivery. As institutional investors demand predictable cash flows and operational transparency from commercial assets, platforms like Table Space must demonstrate that their technology stack translates into measurable performance advantages.

These leaders, Nerurkar in infrastructure, Prabhu in logistics, Mehra in proptech-enabled commercial real estate, collectively illustrate that the Indian market now requires operational depth across every major asset class. The era of passive capital deployment into Indian real estate has given way to an era of active, platform-driven asset management.

The regulatory environment reinforces this operational imperative. The Registration Bill 2025, currently under review by the Department of Land Resources, seeks to replace the 117-year-old Registration Act of 1908 by digitizing property registration, title verification, and enabling a single-window clearance system. The Delhi Land Records Bill, 2026, proposes issuing a unique digital property identification for every property in Delhi to establish clear ownership through scientific surveys. Both legislative initiatives, if enacted, would reduce friction in property transactions and title assurance, but they also require institutional operators to build compliance infrastructure capable of adapting to new digital frameworks.

Platform operators who invest in regulatory readiness and digital compliance today will hold a structural advantage as India's property governance modernizes over the next decade.

What does the rise of domestic capital mean for the institutional operator model in India?

The record 64% share of domestic capital in institutional real estate investment during H1 2026 carries implications that extend well beyond capital sourcing. Domestic institutional investors, including insurance companies, pension funds, and family offices, bring different return expectations, governance requirements, and time horizons compared to traditional foreign institutional capital.

Domestic investors often prioritize operational transparency, regulatory alignment, and demonstrable local expertise over pure return optimization. This creates a natural alignment with the institutional operator model. Leaders like Nerurkar, who combine global platform standards with deep local operational knowledge, become essential intermediaries between capital providers and asset performance.

The market trajectory reinforces this dynamic. The India real estate market is projected to reach $1,264 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 10.08% from 2026 to 2034, according to IMARC Group. Cushman & Wakefield projects that institutional investment activity will remain stable in H2 2026, supported by India's strong macroeconomic fundamentals and continued infrastructure-led growth. Sustained institutional capital flows of this magnitude require a corresponding expansion of operational leadership capacity.

The constraint on India's institutional real estate growth is no longer capital availability. It is the supply of leaders capable of operating complex, multi-asset platforms at institutional standards across a diverse and demanding regulatory landscape.

This supply gap explains why appointments like Momaya's at Blackstone and the operational roles held by Nerurkar at Brookfield, Prabhu at Greenbase, and Mehra at Table Space carry strategic significance that extends beyond their respective firms. Each appointment represents an institutional bet that operational excellence at the leadership level is the binding constraint on portfolio performance in India.

The operator as competitive moat

GRI Institute's engagement with senior leaders across India's real estate and infrastructure sectors reveals a consistent theme in strategic conversations within its community: the competitive advantage in Indian institutional real estate is shifting from capital access to operational capability. Global platforms that built their Indian presence primarily through capital deployment are now investing heavily in operational leadership structures, recognizing that returns in India are increasingly determined by execution quality rather than entry pricing.

Mihir Nerurkar's role at Brookfield represents this evolution in concentrated form. The institutional operator, a leader who combines financial acumen with engineering-level understanding of assets and regulatory fluency across Indian jurisdictions, is becoming the most strategically valuable asset in any platform's portfolio.

As India's real estate market scales toward its projected $1,264 billion valuation by 2034, the platforms that will capture disproportionate value are those that treat operational leadership as a core investment thesis, building deep, experienced management teams capable of navigating complexity at scale. The blueprint is clear. The question is which platforms will build it fast enough.