Deemed to be one of the fastest-growing cities in India, the beautiful city of Guwahati flanked by the river Brahmaputra and lush, fertile valleys throughout its course, is a key city in the North-Eastern India state of Assam that serves as a gateway to the eight northeastern states of India. A place that has withstood the test of time and conquests, Guwahati is gradually proving to be a landmark for emerging logistics and warehousing advancements in the region.
The city of Guwahati is home to Dispur, the capital of the beautiful state of Assam, known across the globe for its rich and exquisite flora and fauna. The busy and bustling city of Guwahati is expected to house 2.8 million residents by 2025. It is ideally placed and well connected to other North-Eastern cities like Jalpaiguri, Dibrugarh, Shillong, & Kolkata. The State of Assam is at a unique position of being at a strategic geographic location with a robust connectivity network, making it an ideal destination for going forth with business with the ASEAN countries as well.
Guwahati Warehousing Clusters
The city of Guwahati harbours prime warehousing clusters that are now spread across the region. The northern bank of the city, called “North Guwahati” by the locals is replete with abundant large land tracts, thus being an interesting choice for newer warehousing clusters. Apart from that, Beltola, Lokhra, Amingaon &Changsari-Brahmaputra are other preferred locations. The rent in these locations varies between INR 15-20/sft/month. The land rates are stable and vary from INR 0.8 cr/acre to INR 3.0 cr/acre.
Lokhra, a place near the heart of the City, is an established Warehousing corridor. Therefore, high rent rates and land prices are observed in the corridor. Beltola and Amingaon are the growing WH corridors in the fringes of the city with low rentals and land prices. Interestingly, Changsari-Brahmaputra is an industrial area that lies on the periphery of the city but has higher rent rates than Beltola and Amingaon. There is considerable growth in the Warehouse Stock from 2015 to 2017 with the stock almost doubling during this period. The developers have increased their focus on building Grade A stock from 2016. The overall supply across Grade A and B are expected to grow at 33% CAGR.
Highway Connectivity Facilitating Growth
All locations on the National Highway-27 cluster in the northern area on the other end of the Saraighat Bridge are upcoming warehouse locations where large land banks are either held by industrial developers for self-use or Build-to-Suit(BTS) construction or available for aggregation for large facilities.
Locations on the NH-27 cluster consist of warehouses of companies that have proliferated across sectors such as FMCG and FMCD. Known names and warehouse occupiers in this cluster are ERISlife Sciences, Donwell Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd., Kingfisher, Jerico, Reliance, Jio, Coca- Cola and Havells India Pvt. Ltd. E-commerce companies have also started marking their presence with their mid-sized facilities; a trend which is likely to continue and garner a higher share in the total warehousing space consumed going forward.
The NH-17 cluster is home to several locations such as Azara and Palashbari that are pertinent warehouse spots despite having narrow and congested roads, as they are in close proximity to the airport, a point which is preferred by pharmaceutical companies such as Sun-Pharma Brahmaputra Group and Natco Pharma that have an established footprint in this belt. In this cluster, the land is available but demands land aggregation for large facilities.
For enhancing the prospect of Ease of Doing Business in the region, the Government of Assam has reserved two industrial zones on both sides of NH 37 from Jalukbari to Kukurmara and another extending beside NH 31 from Jalukbari to Tihu, excluding the stretch covering tribal belts and blocks, wetlands. This move is expected to encourage prospective entrepreneurs and business houses to set up their units. Rampur, the area that lies to the National Highway 37(NH-37) is also well connected to nearby towns and cities by road.
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