new delhi leasing of office spaces witnessed a sharp uptick in the julyseptember period at 125 million square feet across top eight cities on better demand especially from the it sector with economy coming back to normalcy and corporate workforces slowly returning to work from office according to knight frank indiathe gross absorption of office space stood at 47 million square feet in the corresponding period of the previous year and 36 million square feet in the previous quarter according to knight franks india real estate update q3 2021 that was released on monday through a video conferencethe consultant noted that the total office transactions of the eight india markets in q3 2021 have improved and reached 83 per cent of the 2019 quarterly average levelthe third quarter of 2021 saw the indian office space market chart a robust recovery after the second wave of the covid pandemic threatened to derail the market in the preceding quarterthe volumes achieved in this quarter are also statistically significant when benchmarked against the quarterly average of 2019 as office transactions were at a historic high in that year said shishir baijal chairman and managing director knight frank indiaaccording to the data office space leasing in mumbai rose to 12 million square feet during julyseptember 2021 from 1 million square feet in the yearago periodin the delhincr office market leasing transactions rose to 2 million square feet from 09 million square feet during the period under reviewoffice space leasing in bengaluru jumped to 43 million square feet from 11 million square feet while pune saw demand rising to 1 million square feet from 02 million square feetahmedabad saw a rise in leasing of office space to 03 million sq ft from 01 million square feetthe absorption of office space in chennai went up to 16 million square feet from 07 million square feet while the demand in hyderabad surged to 21 million square feet from 05 million square feethowever the leasing of office space in kolkata fell to 01 million square feet during julyseptember 2021 from 02 million square feet in the corresponding period of the previous yearthe office market has shown a smart bounce back in the third quarter going forward with the economy moving towards normalcy and corporates making plans to get back to work from office the outlook for the segment is likely to improve further said rajani sinha chief economist and national directorresearch knight frank indiahealthy performance of the it sector in the last few quarters and strong hiring in the tech sector also bodes well for the office segment she observedas per the report the information technology sector was the largest consumer of space during the quarter and took up 34 per cent of the space transactedoccupiers also took up nearly 23500 coworking seats across the eight markets during the third quarter of this calendar year the highest this yearknight frank said that office rentals remained stagnant during the julyseptember periodin terms of rental values ncr was the