Version 1: IBM India rents 2.83 lakh sq ft of Bengaluru office space for 10 years

The deal comes with Rs 2.49 crore of monthly rent, a Rs 14.96 crore deposit and fit-out costs. Here is what a lease, a deposit and fit-out rent mean.

Picture a rent bill of about Rs 2.49 crore. Not for a year. For one month. That is the base rent IBM India will pay for one office in Bengaluru, as per lease papers reported on 23 October 2026 by Business Standard.

The Indian arm of the American tech giant IBM has rented 2,83,321 sq ft at Bagmane Solarium City, a tech park in the Whitefield and Brookefield area of Bengaluru. The deal runs for 10 years. Here is what all of it means, in plain words.

First, what is a lease?

A lease is a rent agreement. Think of a family renting a flat. They sign papers with the owner, pay a deposit, and pay rent every month. The papers also say how long they can stay and how much the rent will rise later.

A company does the same thing, only on a giant scale. IBM India is the tenant, the one who rents. The landlord, the owner, is Akruthi Infra-Build Developers, a Bagmane Group company, as The Economic Times reported.

A counter rising to 2,83,321 sq ft with four bars growing beside it — IBM India's new space covers the ground floor and three more floors of one tower.

How big is 2.83 lakh sq ft?

Big numbers are hard to picture, so here is a simple trick. Imagine a roomy flat of 1,000 sq ft. IBM India's new office is as big as about 283 such flats put together.

All that space sits on the ground floor and the first three floors of the park's Radon Tower, as per the documents seen by Hindustan Times. Those documents were accessed through Propstack, a company that tracks property deals.

Here is a short clip of Bagmane Solarium City, the tech park where the new office is.

Watch on YouTube

The rent, broken down like a pocket money budget

IBM India pays Rs 88 for every square foot each month. Multiply that by 2,83,321 sq ft and the monthly base rent comes to Rs 2,49,32,248. That is roughly Rs 8.3 lakh for every single day of a 30 day month.

On top of that, IBM India has put down a security deposit of Rs 14.96 crore. A deposit is money the owner holds as safety, just like the deposit a student pays before moving into a PG. Here, the deposit is almost exactly six months of rent.

The rent will not stay at Rs 88 forever. The lease has a 15% escalation every three years. Escalation simply means a planned rise in rent. So after the first three years, Rs 88 becomes about Rs 101 per sq ft.

Two panels: Rs 88 per sq ft at the start, about Rs 101 per sq ft after three years — A 15% rise every three years is written into the lease.

The Economic Times says this kind of rise is a standard feature of long office leases. It lets the owner earn more as the years pass, a bit like a chai stall raising its price a little every few years.

What is fit-out rent?

An empty office floor is like an empty flat with bare walls. Before people can work there, it needs desks, lights, cables, air conditioning and meeting rooms. Getting all this ready is called a fit-out.

As per the reports, IBM India will pay a fit-out rent of Rs 2.98 crore a month for five years, until March 2031. That adds up to around Rs 179 crore. The Economic Times explains that fit-out deals usually cover the cost of preparing and equipping an office, though the exact terms depend on the agreement.

Here is a surprise. For those five years, the monthly fit-out rent is bigger than the base rent. Together, the two come to about Rs 5.47 crore every month at the start.

The full bill: Rs 522 crore

Over 10 years, the base rent adds up to around Rs 343 crore, once the rent rises are counted. Add the Rs 179 crore of fit-out rent, and the total outgo is about Rs 522 crore, as The Economic Times estimated.

Two bars: base rent of Rs 343 crore over 10 years and fit-out rent of Rs 179 crore over 5 years — Base rent is the bigger part of the bill over the full 10 years.

A quick check helps. With no rent rise at all, 120 months at about Rs 2.49 crore would already be close to Rs 299 crore. The planned rises push the base rent up to around Rs 343 crore.

Why is this news only now?

The dates tell a slow story. As per Hindustan Times, the lease started on 5 February 2026. The lease deed, the main agreement, was signed on 29 May 2026. It was then officially registered on 1 October 2026. Registration is like getting an official stamp on the papers. The news reports are based on these registration papers, which Propstack accessed, and that is how the deal came out in October.

Neither Hindustan Times nor The Economic Times got a comment from IBM before their stories went out.

IBM keeps renting more space

This is not a one-off. Earlier this year, IBM India rented 2.3 lakh sq ft at Intellion Park in Gurugram, with a total rent of about Rs 180 crore over 10 years, Hindustan Times reported. In 2024, it took 8.3 lakh sq ft of office space in Bengaluru for 10 years.

IBM has been in India since 1951, as per the same report. Business Standard says it now has offices in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Noida.

Why Bengaluru keeps winning big offices

Bengaluru leads India's office market, and the numbers show it. Property firm Colliers India found that the city leased 5.2 million sq ft of office space in July to September 2026, up 11% from a year earlier, Business Standard reported. Bengaluru kept the top spot in Indian office demand.

Across eight big Indian cities, office deals in the first nine months of 2026 added up to 66.7 million sq ft, about the same as the same months last year, as per Knight Frank India.

The Economic Times says the demand comes from tech companies, global capability centres (GCCs) and other big foreign firms. A GCC is an office that a global company sets up in India to do its own work, like tech, finance or research, instead of hiring an outside firm.

Raja Seetharaman, co-founder of Propstack, told Hindustan Times that the deal shows large tech companies still want big, high-quality offices in Bengaluru. Property people call such top-quality buildings Grade-A, a bit like the premium seats in a cricket stadium.

What it means for first-jobbers

When a company signs a 10-year lease for lakhs of sq ft, it is planning to use that space for a long time. For students and young workers in Bengaluru, it is one more sign of how much space big tech employers are taking in the city's tech parks, desks, canteens and all.

As it was first published

IBM India rents 2.83 lakh sq ft of Bengaluru office space for 10 years