Everyone is fully back at office, except global tech companies: WeWork India chief

Indian startups have been pretty much back at office for almost two quarters now

While employees in sectors like tech startups, BFSI, consulting and media were fully back to working from office in 2023, staff at global tech companies in the country were lagging behind in this regard, according to WeWork India chief Karan Virwani.

Moreover, this movement of employees back to their workplaces is expected to drive up the co-working company’s revenue by up to 30 percent in FY24 to around Rs 1,800 crore. At present, WeWork India has around 55 locations open across seven cities, close to about 90,000 desks, eight million square feet of space, and around 75,000 employees working out of its workspaces.

“Companies in sectors like BFSI, consulting and media are almost 100 percent back. For global tech companies, you would see that 60-70 percent of the employees are back in office four to five days a week. I think they are the last ones to fully come back,” said Virwani.

“Indian startups have been pretty much back at office for almost two quarters now. Across all our buildings, you will rarely see peak occupancy crossing 70-75 percent even when 100 percent of the seats are booked. It was like this even in the pre-Covid era,” he added.

Virwani said that the company has a new space management tool called ‘WeWork Workplace’ that can combine all space types (privately leased/owned, WeWork and WeWork shared/affiliate) within a single dashboard. This tool would enable its customers to manage their desk requirements across cities and allow their employees to check who is in office when so thy can plan their visits accordingly.

“From a CEO’s perspective, he's saying ‘half my people are not coming to the office, do I ever need this 100 person office? Why can't I just take a 50 person office and reduce my cost?’ But till now there's no real data. This tool is going to help them do that,” said Virwani.

Ahead of launching Workplace, WeWork India ran a pilot program which garnered positive feedback from various enterprises, indicating the need for such space management tools. Already, the tool has 30 accounts in use by over 6,000 members in India, and over 830 accounts and 151,000 members globally.

WeWork India aims to be adding 20,000 seats each year adding to the 6.5 million square feet of assets across 50 locations in New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad. In 2022, it secured Rs 550 crore from funds managed by a private credit platform, BPEA Credit to strengthen its reach.

It only pays a management fee to the global entity, which is in the $2-4 million range, as per disclosures made at the end of the June quarter. There is no share in revenues.