Our first commercial building went up in Kalamassery in 2008. Our most ambitious one will open at SmartCity in 2028. Between the two, twenty years and about eight kilometres, Kochi’s commercial centre of gravity moved. This is what we saw.
Kalamassery: the industrial city
For most of the twentieth century, Kalamassery was where Kochi made things. The industrial estate, HMT, the fertiliser complex at nearby Udyogamandal, and later Cochin University of Science and Technology gave the northern edge of the city a working character quite different from the trading town around MG Road. It was well served by the national highway to Aluva and the airport, and it had land.
When we built Arya Bhangy Grande there in 2008, seven floors of retail and office space, it was a bet that the northern corridor would keep growing as the city expanded along the highway. It did. National retail brands took space. Kochi Metro arrived in 2017, with stations along the highway through Kalamassery, and the corridor from Edappally to Aluva became one of the city’s busiest commercial stretches. Grande is still full, and it is where we opened the first Gridspace, our coworking brand, in 2024.
Kakkanad: the IT corridor
While Kalamassery grew along the highway, something different was happening to the east. Infopark opened at Kakkanad in 2004, on what had been farmland and marsh, and over the following decade the area became Kerala’s technology corridor. The people who worked there needed homes, schools and shops, and Kakkanad went from a village to a suburb to a city district in the time it takes to raise one child.
The pattern of demand changed with it. Kalamassery’s commercial tenants were retailers and offices serving a local population. Kakkanad’s were technology companies, many of them foreign, with different expectations of a building: large floor plates, high-capacity power and data, parking for thousands, and international standards of finish and management.
SmartCity: the next scale
SmartCity Kochi, the special economic zone beside Infopark, was planned for that demand at a scale Kerala had not seen. The first phase took longer than promised, as these things do. But in June 2025 the Lulu IT Twin Towers opened there: two thirty-storey towers, 152 metres, 3.5 million square feet, the tallest office buildings in South India, with space for around 30,000 people. [Source: Onmanorama, June 2025.] Whatever one thought of SmartCity’s timeline, the scale of what is now standing there settles the question of where Kochi’s next decade of commercial growth will centre.
Our building there
Arya Bhangy TechPark at SmartCity, due in 2028, will be around three lakh square feet directly opposite the Lulu towers. It is designed for global capability centres and multinational occupiers, which means the things that kind of tenant takes for granted: large, efficient floor plates, power and data provision sized for round-the-clock operations, parking at a scale Kochi buildings rarely provide, and a standard of finish and management that an overseas head office would recognise.
It is the largest building we have undertaken, by some distance. We took it on for the same reason we built in Kalamassery in 2008: the corridor was moving, and we wanted to be where it was going rather than where it had been.
What this means if you are choosing commercial space
Kochi now has three distinct commercial geographies, and they suit different businesses.
- The old centre, MG Road and around, for businesses that need the city’s traditional customers and are willing to accept older buildings and difficult parking.
- The northern corridor, Edappally to Aluva through Kalamassery, for retail and offices serving the residential population along the highway and metro. Established, busy, and with the best road access to the airport.
- The eastern corridor, Kakkanad and SmartCity, for technology and services businesses that need scale, modern buildings, and proximity to the talent that lives there.
We have buildings in two of the three and are building in the third. Ask us which suits what you do; the honest answer is not always the newest one.