Olive Group re-enters MMR real estate market

South-based real estate developer Olive Group has announced its re-entry into the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) to capitalise on growth opportunities in the Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area (NAINA), which has been planned close to the Navi Mumbai International Airport, in Navi Mumbai. The developer, which has a presence in Kerala, Bengaluru and Tamil Nadu, having delivered more than 47 lakh sq. ft. of residential and hospitality projects is planning a development pipeline of more than one crore sq. ft. across MMR. The renewed focus on the region marks a shift after several years during which the company’s growth was largely concentrated in southern India. “We are bullish about Navi Mumbai because this is one of the fastest-growing urban markets in India where planning, policy and infrastructure are converging at an unprecedented scale. Over the last four decades, I have seen how cities expand in phases—often in an uncoordinated manner,” said P. V. Mathai, Chairman and Managing Director, Olive Group. “What makes the NAINA region different is that public investment, regulatory planning and execution timelines are moving in alignment,” he said. Dr. Mathai pointed to the scale of public capital being committed to the corridor. “Public investment running into several tens of thousands of crores is already committed to the NAINA zone through the international airport, metro rail connectivity, expressways, arterial road networks, utilities and planned social and economic infrastructure such as IT and logistics parks. This level of coordinated investment typically unfolds over decades; here, it is being compressed into a single growth cycle,” he said. The Navi Mumbai International Airport, one of the country’s largest greenfield infrastructure projects, is expected to become operational in phases and is projected to handle up to 90 million passengers annually once fully developed. Alongside the airport, parallel investments are underway in transport infrastructure, utilities, logistics facilities and social infrastructure, all planned within the NAINA framework. According to Dr. Mathai, this scale of development changes how the region is being conceptualised. “The region is being planned not as an extension of Mumbai, but as a city-scale economic ecosystem. Housing, employment, mobility and social infrastructure are being designed together, which is rare in Indian urban development,” he said. He added that such alignment alters the role developers must play. “In environments like this, the opportunity is not to build isolated projects, but to participate in shaping sustainable urban districts. That is the lens through which we are evaluating Navi Mumbai—not as a short-term real estate play, but as a long-horizon urban development opportunity,” he said. Olive Group is planning to develop around 50 lakh sq. ft. in the airport influence zone over the next five years. The expansion is expected to be executed through a mix of new residential developments and joint ventures, with project launches calibrated to infrastructure readiness and market absorption. On the group’s historical association with the region, Varghese Mathew, Director, Olive Group, said “the current re-entry is driven by a fundamentally different urban context.” “Our real estate journey began in Navi Mumbai with more than 20 projects in the early 1990s, when the city itself was still finding its identity. What brings us back to MMR today is not nostalgia, but the emergence of a fundamentally different urban opportunity. NAINA is not about adding buildings to a city; it is about planning a city before it gets built,” he said. “In most Indian cities, developers are required to address issues that already exist—congestion, lack of open spaces and stressed utilities. NAINA allows that equation to be reversed. It creates the opportunity to build integrated lifestyle districts where housing, work access, community infrastructure and open spaces are planned together,” he added.