Xander Leasing: Closing 0.4M Sq Ft at an 11% Market Premium

Arjan took on leasing responsibility for Xander's entire industrial and logistics portfolio in his final five months at the firm, reporting directly to the CFO. The portfolio spanned 3.3 million square feet across Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Kolkata, leased to major logistics and e-commerce players including Amazon, Flipkart, and DHL.

The standard approach to pricing industrial leases relied heavily on third-party reports from JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, and CBRE. Arjan recognized early that these benchmarks often diverged from actual prevailing rates, particularly in markets on the outskirts of cities where broker networks were thin. He built a direct network of local brokers and maintained ongoing conversations with existing tenants to get a ground-level read on where the market actually sat.

The sharper edge came from a specific insight about the portfolio's special economic zone assets. He worked through HSN codes to quantify the import duty and tax savings available to logistics players operating out of SEZ warehouses, a benefit many tenants had not fully priced into their leasing decisions. By walking prospective tenants through the actual tax math, he reframed the conversation from rent rate to total cost of operations.

At the same time, he was tracking the broader market signal: both e-commerce and logistics players were in an aggressive expansion phase. That demand pressure, combined with the SEZ tax angle, gave him the leverage to move quickly and close on favorable terms.

He leased approximately 0.4 million square feet in five months, at an 11% premium to prevailing market rent rates, adding roughly 16.55 million rupees in monthly revenue to the portfolio.