BNP Paribas, the French bank, has leased 500,000 square feet of office space in Chennai, in southern India, according to The Economic Times. The ten-year lease covers four floors at One Radial and is one of the largest office leases in the city this year.
Mindspace Business Parks REIT, a real estate investment trust, owns One Radial. The complex covers 2.6 million square feet in total.
The bank is pulling its Chennai staff together. Chennai is now its second-largest office market in India by space, after Mumbai, in western India, where it has offices in Bandra-Kurla Complex and Navi Mumbai.
The report estimated office rents in the area at $0.93 per square foot per month and said the BNP Paribas deal is understood to fall in a similar range, according to people familiar with the transaction. On that basis it put the bank’s rent over ten years at $57 million, before rent increases, rent-free periods, incentives and other charges.
The lease comes as multinationals set up or expand global capability centers in India. Banks and other financial companies use these centers for technology, analytics, risk management, operations and other specialized work, the report said.
Chennai has become an alternative to Bengaluru and Hyderabad, both in southern India, and Pune, in western India, for companies that want to hold down operating costs and still reach a large pool of talent. Industry experts cited in the report pointed to lower costs for housing and talent, and to employee attrition they see as lower than in some competing markets. Later phases of the Chennai Metro are expected to improve connections between job centers and residential areas.
India’s office market took up sixty-six million square feet of space from January through September 2026, up 8% from a year earlier, according to an industry study the report cited. Global capability centers accounted for 42% of the total.
