India's largest REIT, Knowledge Realty Trust, reported 15% growth in Q1 FY27 net operating income to ₹1,243 crore and distributed a record ₹752 crore to unit holders.
Knowledge Realty Trust, co-sponsored by Sattva Group and Blackstone, kicked off FY27 with numbers that are hard to argue with. Net operating income for the April-June quarter came in at ₹1,243.1 crore, up 15% year-on-year, and the trust declared a record distribution of ₹751.6 crore to unit holders, working out to ₹1.70 per unit, itself up 5% from the previous quarter.
CEO Shirish Godbole put it simply: "We had a strong start to FY27, with both revenue and NOI growing 15%." The growth is being driven by higher leasing activity and rental escalations across the portfolio, which spans 29 Grade-A office assets totalling 46.5 million sq. ft. across six Indian cities, with 37.3 million sq. ft. already completed and another 2.6 million sq. ft. under construction. That's a genuinely large footprint, and it makes KRT the largest REIT in India by market capitalisation.
REIT distributions are a decent proxy for how confident institutional investors are in India's office market right now, and demand here is coming from two directions at once, global capability centres continuing their expansion, and front-office occupiers signing fresh leases. Portfolio occupancy is running at a strong 93%, which suggests the assets underpinning these numbers aren't just large, they're genuinely leased and generating income, not sitting empty and inflating a headline figure.
KRT isn't operating in isolation. India's five listed REITs collectively distributed over ₹2,331 crore in a recent quarter to more than 3.3 lakh unit holders, with distributions up 19% year-on-year across the sector, excluding KRT's own contribution. Indian REITs more broadly are currently delivering yields of 6-7.5%, according to a CREDAI-Anarock report, ahead of several mature markets including the US and Japan. That context matters, KRT's strong quarter isn't a one-off in an otherwise struggling asset class, it's part of a sector that's been performing consistently well.
At Hommea, REIT performance like this is a genuinely useful leading indicator, since a REIT distributing more money to investors usually means the underlying office assets are leasing well and rents are climbing, exactly the kind of momentum we've already seen play out in Gurugram's own office market, which recently crossed 100 million sq. ft. of total stock. Sustained institutional confidence in office assets tends to filter into residential demand nearby over time.
