Material waste is recognised as one of the major waste types in the construction industry. Currently, the documentation available in literature on this issue in the Indian construction industry context is very less. This paper aims to investigate the material waste in the Indian construction industry, focusing mainly on building projects. Six ongoing projects in southern India were taken up for the study and the waste identified was quantified in terms of cost. Data regarding material waste was obtained from the reconciliation data and other documents maintained by planning engineers at the site. The results showed that the material waste as percentage of material cost for the selected items that were studied varied from 2.6% to 7.9%. The results also indicate that there is a large amount of variability in the wastage among the projects studied. Most of this waste can be avoided by implementing suitable preventive measures and by following lean construction practices, thereby improving the performance.