Now, co-working office facilities in art and comedy studios

Delhi-based co-working space startup myHQ, run by JustWork Technologies Pvt Ltd, after raising Rs 3.5 crore in a fresh round of funding recently, plans to expand operations to over 200 spaces across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It plans to include innovative areas such as art and comedy studios besides the cafes and lounges.

Besides taking up more seats in cafes, lounges, offices and even hotels, the company has plans to set up co-working spaces in an art studio, comedy studio and is looking at the feasibility of curating such spaces in malls, say Utkarsh Kawatra and Vinayak Agrawal, two IITians who founded the company two years ago.

“We have over 60 plus locations in Delhi NCR and we are planning to expand to 200 locations with the funding we have received. We are exploring different geographies and are closely evaluating Mumbai or Bengaluru,” the founders said.

“In Delhi-NCR we have 64 locations currently and we have plans to scale up to 150 locations by the end of this year and then look at another city,” they say, adding the plan is to increase the total number of seats from 800 to 2500 by the end of the year.

The company currently has 20 spaces in cafes with 250 seats; 10 spaces in lounges with 200 seats; 30 spaces in offices with 350 seats and two spaces with 30 seats in art studios.

The company has opened a facility in hotels and in art studios and is planning to enter into a tie-up with a comedy studio soon.

The company has an asset-light model and a technology-driven approach to run centres in neighbourhoods. “A large part of the funding that we have received will be utilised to strengthen our technology and information systems that exist. These help us manage operations and customer experience at these locations,” the founders said.

“We are not necessarily restricted to cafes and lounges, these are spaces we started out with but the larger underlining thesis is that we do not necessary set up our own office spaces or co-working spaces but make optimum use of real estate infrastructure which is lying vacant or is inefficiently used and which can be easily converted to co-working spaces.

"As for offices, the company has tied up with offices that have about 10 to 20 percent of seats lying vacant. “We’ve helped them generate additional revenue. In one case, we helped turn a massive office cafeteria, lying vacant for most of the day except during lunch hours, into a co-working space,” they said.

So, who operates out of these facilities, who is the target audience? Freelancers and medium sized firms. All that users have to do is log on to the mobile app to reserve spaces and manage subscription.

“One segment that we are currently targeting is the corporate sales and business development teams, professionals who are on the go and who make client visits in multiple parts of the city and need the space between these meetings or a space to conduct these meetings. These are a relevant target group for us," they said.

As for the payment structure, there are three plans - 1 visit, 5 visits and 22 visits. The 1 visit plan is for Rs 299 wherein the user gets back 200 redeemable credits. The 22 visit plan is for Rs 4999 where the user gets back 4500 redeemable credits. These redeemable credits can be used to pay for the users’ food consumption at a work cafe. When the user visits a co-working/office space, 200 credits get deducted per visit.

According to Knight Frank India’s latest report, the co-working sector took up 2.8 million sq ft which translates to a significant 32 percent of the space transacted by the other services sector or 13 percent of the total space transacted during the first half of 2018.

Many startups and an increasing number of companies prefer co-working spaces to conventional office spaces due to lower rentals, savings on operational costs and a more flexible work environment. A company can save as much as 30 percent on the operational cost alone, according to some estimates.

Awfis Space Solutions, a home-grown co-working space provider, recently raised $20 million in series C funding from its existing investors global venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. The company today has 25,000 seats across 55 centres spread in 9 cities. “For us 45 per cent business comes from the SME sector, 30 per cent from the corporates and 15 percent is a combination of start-ups and freelancers. Currently, we are operational in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Noida, Gurgaon Chandigarh and we will soon expand to Chennai, Kochi, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, and Ahmedabad. We will go live in the next 60 to 90 days,” says Amit Ramani, CEO of the company.

The additional capital raised last week will help the company explore the markets it is currently operational in and also expand into Tier 2 cities. “By March-April 2019 we should be at about 40,000 seats across 85 centres in 15 cities,” he said.

GoWork, a global co-working company, this week announced the launch of a premium floor within the premises of its campus located in Udyog Vihar Gurugram. Spread across an area of 32,000 sq ft, the floor can accommodate about 500 individuals. The co-working giant owns co-working space spread across 8 lakh square feet with a capacity of 12,000 seats across its two offices in Gurugram. Rs 800 crore have gone into the two campuses and the company is currently in talks with PE investors to raise 200 million dollars.

Vandana.ramnani@nw18.com