India’s logistics sector is at an inflection point – and warehousing sits at its operational core. What was once viewed largely as a real estate adjunct to manufacturing and trade is now being shaped by a combination of forces – public infrastructure investment, policy execution, talent availability, sustainability economics, and the rising expectations of global capital.

At the heart of this shift is a national objective: reducing logistics costs as a share of GDP while improving reliability and speed across supply chains. Warehousing will play a critical enabling role in this by translating connectivity, digitisation, and policy intent into on-ground performance. 

Union Budget 2026–27 will define how deliberately India chooses to build and sweat the physical logistics backbone that will support manufacturing, exports, and consumption over the rest of this decade. 

How Warehousing Is Being Rebuilt for India’s Logistics Future

From Real Estate to Enabling Infrastructure
As logistics costs, compliance requirements, and customer expectations rise, warehousing begins to function less like a property category and more like enabling infrastructure. Well-planned industrial and logistics parks – those following requisite regulatory approvals, and with resilient utilities, robust safety systems, and multimodal access – are becoming essential to business continuity. 

• • Connectivity Rewrites Location Logic
    Logistics efficiency increasingly depends on how well physical networks connect, which is why location logic itself is changing across the country. What now defines logistics outcomes is not proximity alone, but connectivity quality – how reliably goods move through a location, how congestion is managed, and how effectively a site integrates with national transport networks.
  • Operations Are Already Evolving
    Today, companies expect predictability from warehousing infrastructure: reliable access, stable power, compliant operations, safety, and the ability to scale without disruption. 
    • Inside warehouses, operational models are evolving in parallel. Automation is being adopted pragmatically as a response to throughput requirements, accuracy expectations, and labour availability. Robotics, sortation systems, and yard and facility management platforms are being implemented where they make operational sense. 
    • Cold chain infrastructure is expanding rapidly across pharmaceuticals, food processing, quick commerce, and export-oriented agri-value chains. Once viewed as a niche, it is now increasingly recognised as essential logistics infrastructure, with direct implications for food security, healthcare, and exports. 
    • At the same time, compliance and documentation are becoming more integrated. Digital records, traceability, and audit readiness are reducing disputes and cycle times, enabling warehouses to operate with fewer interruptions and lower hidden costs.
  • Sustainability and Skills as Core Inputs
    Alongside these operational shifts, sustainability and skill capital are emerging as decisive economic factors. 
    • Energy costs, water availability, and climate resilience directly affect operating expenses, insurance, and asset value. Rooftop solar, power optimisation, water reuse, and flood-resilient design are increasingly commercial decisions. Equally critical is the talent pool. 
    • Logistics and warehousing are no longer low-skill, asset-heavy operations. They are technology-enabled, compliance-intensive, and customer-critical. Skill gaps – particularly in operations, safety, systems, and automation – now threaten sector competitiveness. 

Together, these shifts explain why warehousing is increasingly discussed alongside roads, rail, ports, and industrial clusters as a core component of India’s logistics infrastructure rather than a downstream real estate decision. Many companies are already investing in these capabilities because waiting until 2030 would be a competitive disadvantage. The companies that succeed will be those that design networks for variability rather than averages, treat sustainability, safety, and talent as operating fundamentals, and build warehouses that function as part of an integrated system – not in isolation.

Why Union Budget 2026-27 Matters for the Logistics Industry

These transformative advances in logistics and warehousing form the backdrop against which Union Budget 2026–27 becomes especially significant.

The role of policy requires shifting from announcing capacity to improving execution, alignment, and system-wide efficiency.

Union Budget FY2025–26 laid important groundwork for the transformation of India’s logistics sector, through policy support, Maritime Development Fund, “BharatTradeNet” (BTN) digital infrastructure, and enhanced green energy incentives, alongside strengthening last-mile delivery and boosting cold chain infrastructure.  Budget 2026-27 must therefore build on this foundation with a sharper focus on outcomes rather than intent.

Discussions with experts from Horizon Industrial Parks and its stakeholders, ahead of the budget, point to a clear and integrated set of expectations, corresponding to how logistics and warehousing are already evolving on the ground.

• • Multimodal Connectivity
    At the core is faster on-ground delivery under PM Gati Shakti, with an emphasis on corridor readiness rather than new announcements. This includes last-mile rail connectivity to industrial clusters, ports, and logistics parks; support for containerised and scheduled rail freight; and viability support for inland waterways during the scale-up phase. These measures are critical to addressing India’s persistent road dependence – where trucks continue to carry roughly 60–65 per cent of freight, rail about 27–28 per cent, and waterways under 2 per cent. Further reductions in logistics costs will require a structural modal shift, enabled by reliable multimodal interfaces.
  • Truck Productivity
    Closely linked, is the need to address trucking productivity as an execution issue. Indian trucks travel only 250–300 kilometres per day, compared with 500–800 kilometres in more efficient logistics markets. Empty return trips, congestion, loading delays, and fragmented fleet ownership continue to depress utilisation. Improving truck productivity remains one of the highest-impact levers available – and here, warehousing plays a critical role, not merely as a storage node but as a throughput and turnaround enabler that reduces dwell times and supports smoother modal transitions.
  • Policy Alignment
    Beyond connectivity and movement, industry expectations also centre on policy alignment across industrial and logistics parks, bonded warehousing, SEZs, and domestic supply chains, ensuring these assets plug seamlessly into national corridors rather than operating in silos. 
  • Digitization
    Digital trade and compliance simplification form another key expectation. Building on platforms such as BharatTradeNet, complementing the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), stakeholders expect Budget 2026-27 to further reduce documentation latency, strengthen interoperability, and improve audit readiness. As warehouses become more compliance-intensive, smoother digital flows translate directly into lower disputes, faster cycle times, and reduced working-capital friction.
  • Cold Chain Infrastructure
    Continued policy support, clearer compliance standards, and easier access to finance will be critical to improving reliability, reducing wastage, and strengthening export competitiveness in temperature-sensitive sectors.
  • Sustainability
    There is also growing expectation that sustainability and energy investments be recognised as structural operating inputs rather than optional upgrades. Industry looks to Budget 2026-27 for clearer incentives that accelerate renewable integration, energy efficiency, and climate-resilient design across logistics and warehousing assets.
  • Skill Capital
    Global experience shows that logistics skill gap challenges can only be addressed through coordinated skilling pipelines, better working environments, and a reframing of logistics as a long-term career – making this another area of expectation from Budget 2026–27.
  • Input Tax Credit & Critical Infrastructure
    Finally, from a logistics execution standpoint, industry leaders are watching closely the treatment of construction and infrastructure inputs. Industrial and logistics parks are capital-intensive to build, and unresolved issues around input tax credit and embedded GST costs continue to influence project economics and delivery timelines. Greater clarity – including recognising construction as critical infrastructure and easing input tax frictions – could materially improve capital efficiency and accelerate execution across the sector.

All in all, these expectations underline a consistent message. Budget 2026–27 is not being anticipated to reinvent logistics policy. It is being looked at to make the system perform – by aligning connectivity, warehousing, compliance, cold chain, sustainability, skills, and capital efficiency into a coherent execution framework. The extent to which this happens will determine whether India consolidates its logistics gains or allows friction to return as volumes scale toward 2030.

Closing Thoughts

India has spent the past decade building the physical foundations of a modern logistics system. The next challenge is to make that system perform – consistently, predictably, and at scale. Union Budget 2026–27 therefore matters not for what it announces, but for how effectively it aligns execution across corridors, facilities, compliance, energy, and skills. As volumes rise and supply chains become more time-sensitive, competitiveness will hinge less on capacity creation and more on reliability, throughput, and resilience. The companies and economies that internalise this shift today will be the ones best positioned for India’s logistics reality in 2030.