Создатель Unity Group Харш Бансал: смешанная застройка снизит издержки и привлечет больше посетителей

- Industry - 6 min read Mixed-use developments can lower costs and unlock more footfall: Unity Group’s Harsh Bansal Speaking with Charu Lamba, Deputy Editor, ETRetail, during the fireside chat “Beyond Single-Use: Is Mixed-Use the Smarter Development Model?” at the 4th ETRetail ShopFWD Summit 2026, Harsh Bansal, Co-Founder, Unity Group, said combining retail with offices, hotels, serviced apartments and entertainment can improve infrastructure utilisation, reduce operating costs and create complementary demand across the week. The next generation of large-scale retail developments in India will increasingly move beyond standalone malls towards mixed-use destinations that combine shopping, offices, hospitality, entertainment and other commercial uses, according to Harsh Bansal, Co-Founder, Unity Group. Speaking with Charu Lamba, Deputy Editor, ETRetail, during the fireside chat “Beyond Single-Use: Is Mixed-Use the Smarter Development Model?” at the 4th ETRetail ShopFWD Summit 2026, Bansal said the economics of larger developments make it increasingly attractive to bring several uses together rather than build each asset in isolation. “Retail development is now moving towards the second generation,” Bansal said, contrasting the standalone shopping centres that emerged around two decades ago with developments that today can run into two million, three million square feet or more. As project sizes expand, he argued, developers gain greater flexibility to combine traditional malls and high streets with hotels, offices, studio or serviced apartments and other commercial formats. The advantage is not merely a broader consumer proposition. It can materially change the economics of operating the asset. Shared infrastructure can improve project economics One of the biggest inefficiencies in a standalone shopping centre, Bansal said, is that infrastructure typically has to be designed for peak demand. Parking, power, air-conditioning, waste management and other facilities need to accommodate the much heavier traffic generated during weekends and holidays, even if weekday utilisation is considerably lower. He cited Unity Group's Vegas Mall in Dwarka, where average footfall is around 35,000-40,000 visitors, rising to approximately 55,000-60,000 during weekends. The infrastructure therefore has to be built around the higher number. Mixed use can help flatten that utilisation curve. An office development attached to a mall, for instance, primarily generates activity from Monday to Friday, while retail demand tends to strengthen over the weekend. The same parking, utilities and other infrastructure can consequently support different users at different times. “The infrastructure you created is utilised from Monday to Friday with the help of shopping as well as the office, and from Saturday-Sunday it is utilised through the shopping centre,” Bansal said. According to him, better utilisation can improve both capital and operating efficiencies because infrastructure and manpower are shared across a larger and more consistent base of users. This creates the potential to operate the retail component at a lower cost while improving the economics of the overall development. Offices and hotels can create captive retail demand The second advantage is on the consumer side. Bansal said office workers located within a mixed-use development can become a recurring customer base for the adjoining shopping centre. They may use restaurants for team lunches or business meetings, shop after work or become familiar enough with the destination to return with their families over the weekend. Familiarity itself can influence visitation. Consumers who already know how to access the property, where to park and what it offers are more likely to consider the same destination for leisure visits, he argued. Hotels and serviced apartments create another complementary consumer base. Guests staying for several days are likely to consume restaurants, entertainment and retail within the same development, particularly when those amenities are easily accessible. Bansal said Unity Group is looking to extend that integration through cross-promotional models between hospitality and retail. At Vegas Mall, for example, the group is planning hotel components that can support programmes where retail spending generates hospitality benefits, while hotel stays can in turn generate shopping incentives. He compared the principle to loyalty ecosystems used across travel and hospitality, where spending in one part of the network encourages consumption in another. The result, he said, can be a cycle in which different components of the development continuously feed demand to one another. Mixed-use can broaden the tenant mix Combining uses can also alter which retailers make sense within a development. A conventional shopping centre may primarily curate around fashion, beauty, food, entertainment and other consumer-facing categories. Adding offices or hotels creates demand for additional products and services. Bansal said mixed-use developments can accommodate a wider food and beverage offer because office workers and hotel guests generate incremental demand for restaurants, cafés and meeting spaces. Other categories such as books, stationery, electronics and technology products can also become more relevant when the destination serves office users alongside shoppers. He estimated that a mixed-use project could support an additional set of brands catering specifically to users of its non-retail components. For developers, this makes tenant curation more closely tied to the total ecosystem of the asset rather than mall footfall alone. Not every use complements retail equally well Despite the advantages, Bansal cautioned that mixed-use development requires careful planning. The different components cannot simply be placed together with the assumption that they will automatically complement each other. Large banquet facilities, for example, can create traffic conflicts when a wedding or major event coincides with a peak retail period. A crowded Friday at the mall combined with a large wedding function could put significant pressure on parking, circulation and other shared infrastructure. Developers therefore need to consider not only whether a complementary use creates demand, but when that demand arrives. The same principle applies to office tenants. Bansal said businesses operating predominantly Monday to Friday can complement a retail asset because their peak usage occurs during periods when mall demand is comparatively lower. By contrast, operations running 24x7 may place continuous pressure on shared infrastructure, reducing some of the utilisation benefits that mixed-use design is intended to create. The success of the model consequently depends on choosing components whose demand cycles fit together rather than clash. Metros and Tier-I cities offer the immediate opportunity Bansal expects the mixed-use model to expand first in markets capable of supporting larger developments. He pointed to metros and Tier-I cities as the most immediate opportunity, where retail, office and hospitality demand can support projects running into millions of square feet. Unity Group has already applied elements of the model at Vegas Mall in Dwarka and at another development where the addition of a hotel and office component contributed to stronger activity across restaurants and cafés, he said. Bansal identified cities such as Chandigarh, Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore and Pune among markets where the model could find room to grow alongside the major metros. Tier-II markets could follow. Rising aspirations, greater exposure and increasing consumer spending are already changing these cities, but Bansal said some smaller markets may need more time because the overall scale of viable developments remains lower. “I’m sure that another five to ten years these types of development will come in Tier-II also,” he said. The mall is evolving into an ecosystem The mixed-use argument ultimately reflects a wider change in how developers think about shopping centres. Rather than treating retail as an isolated asset dependent mainly on weekend footfall, the model seeks to build a destination where different user groups generate activity at different points of the day and week. Offices can support weekday dining and retail. Hotels and serviced apartments can bring customers into restaurants, cinemas and stores. Entertainment can extend dwell time, while retail can add value to hospitality and commercial developments. For Bansal, the attraction lies in that complementarity. “In my opinion, mixed land use is the ideal thing to make the development successful,” he said, pointing to lower operating and infrastructure costs alongside higher potential footfall. As Indian developments become larger and consumers increasingly expect destinations to combine work, shopping, dining, entertainment and hospitality, the competitive advantage may no longer come from building the biggest standalone mall. It could come from designing an ecosystem in which every part of the project gives consumers another reason to stay, return and spend. Speaking with Charu Lamba, Deputy Editor, ETRetail, during the fireside chat “Beyond Single-Use: Is Mixed-Use the Smarter Development Model?” at the 4th ETRetail ShopFWD Summit 2026, Bansal said the economics of larger developments make it increasingly attractive to bring several uses together rather than build each asset in isolation. “Retail development is now moving towards the second generation,” Bansal said, contrasting the standalone shopping centres that emerged around two decades ago with developments that today can run into two million, three million square feet or more. As project sizes expand, he argued, developers gain greater flexibility to combine traditional malls and high streets with hotels, offices, studio or serviced apartments and other commercial formats. The advantage is not merely a broader consumer proposition. It can materially change the economics of operating the asset. Shared infrastructure can improve project economics One of the biggest inefficiencies in a standalone shopping centre, Bansal said, is that infrastructure typically has to be designed for peak demand. Parking, power, air-conditioning, waste management and other facilities need to accommodate the much heavier traffic generated during weekends and holidays, even if weekday utilisation is considerably lower. He cited Unity Group's Vegas Mall in Dwarka, where average footfall is around 35,000-40,000 visitors, rising to approximately 55,000-60,000 during weekends. The infrastructure therefore has to be built around the higher number. Mixed use can help flatten that utilisation curve. An office development attached to a mall, for instance, primarily generates activity from Monday to Friday, while retail demand tends to strengthen over the weekend. The same parking, utilities and other infrastructure can consequently support different users at different times. “The infrastructure you created is utilised from Monday to Friday with the help of shopping as well as the office, and from Saturday-Sunday it is utilised through the shopping centre,” Bansal said. According to him, better utilisation can improve both capital and operating efficiencies because infrastructure and manpower are shared across a larger and more consistent base of users. This creates the potential to operate the retail component at a lower cost while improving the economics of the overall development. Offices and hotels can create captive retail demand The second advantage is on the consumer side. Bansal said office workers located within a mixed-use development can become a recurring customer base for the adjoining shopping centre. They may use restaurants for team lunches or business meetings, shop after work or become familiar enough with the destination to return with their families over the weekend. Familiarity itself can influence visitation. Consumers who already know how to access the property, where to park and what it offers are more likely to consider the same destination for leisure visits, he argued. Hotels and serviced apartments create another complementary consumer base. Guests staying for several days are likely to consume restaurants, entertainment and retail within the same development, particularly when those amenities are easily accessible. Bansal said Unity Group is looking to extend that integration through cross-promotional models between hospitality and retail. At Vegas Mall, for example, the group is planning hotel components that can support programmes where retail spending generates hospitality benefits, while hotel stays can in turn generate shopping incentives. He compared the principle to loyalty ecosystems used across travel and hospitality, where spending in one part of the network encourages consumption in another. The result, he said, can be a cycle in which different components of the development continuously feed demand to one another. Mixed-use can broaden the tenant mix Combining uses can also alter which retailers make sense within a development. A conventional shopping centre may primarily curate around fashion, beauty, food, entertainment and other consumer-facing categories. Adding offices or hotels creates demand for additional products and services. Bansal said mixed-use developments can accommodate a wider food and beverage offer because office workers and hotel guests generate incremental demand for restaurants, cafés and meeting spaces. Other categories such as books, stationery, electronics and technology products can also become more relevant when the destination serves office users alongside shoppers. He estimated that a mixed-use project could support an additional set of brands catering specifically to users of its non-retail components. For developers, this makes tenant curation more closely tied to the total ecosystem of the asset rather than mall footfall alone. Not every use complements retail equally well Despite the advantages, Bansal cautioned that mixed-use development requires careful planning. The different components cannot simply be placed together with the assumption that they will automatically complement each other. Large banquet facilities, for example, can create traffic conflicts when a wedding or major event coincides with a peak retail period. A crowded Friday at the mall combined with a large wedding function could put significant pressure on parking, circulation and other shared infrastructure. Developers therefore need to consider not only whether a complementary use creates demand, but when that demand arrives. The same principle applies to office tenants. Bansal said businesses operating predominantly Monday to Friday can complement a retail asset because their peak usage occurs during periods when mall demand is comparatively lower. By contrast, operations running 24x7 may place continuous pressure on shared infrastructure, reducing some of the utilisation benefits that mixed-use design is intended to create. The success of the model consequently depends on choosing components whose demand cycles fit together rather than clash. Metros and Tier-I cities offer the immediate opportunity Bansal expects the mixed-use model to expand first in markets capable of supporting larger developments. He pointed to metros and Tier-I cities as the most immediate opportunity, where retail, office and hospitality demand can support projects running into millions of square feet. Unity Group has already applied elements of the model at Vegas Mall in Dwarka and at another development where the addition of a hotel and office component contributed to stronger activity across restaurants and cafés, he said. Bansal identified cities such as Chandigarh, Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore and Pune among markets where the model could find room to grow alongside the major metros. Tier-II markets could follow. Rising aspirations, greater exposure and increasing consumer spending are already changing these cities, but Bansal said some smaller markets may need more time because the overall scale of viable developments remains lower. “I’m sure that another five to ten years these types of development will come in Tier-II also,” he said. The mall is evolving into an ecosystem The mixed-use argument ultimately reflects a wider change in how developers think about shopping centres. Rather than treating retail as an isolated asset dependent mainly on weekend footfall, the model seeks to build a destination where different user groups generate activity at different points of the day and week. Offices can support weekday dining and retail. Hotels and serviced apartments can bring customers into restaurants, cinemas and stores. Entertainment can extend dwell time, while retail can add value to hospitality and commercial developments. For Bansal, the attraction lies in that complementarity. “In my opinion, mixed land use is the ideal thing to make the development successful,” he said, pointing to lower operating and infrastructure costs alongside higher potential footfall. As Indian developments become larger and consumers increasingly expect destinations to combine work, shopping, dining, entertainment and hospitality, the competitive advantage may no longer come from building the biggest standalone mall. It could come from designing an ecosystem in which every part of the project gives consumers another reason to stay, return and spend.