·      New seats to come up at prime locations in Sarjapur Road, Hebbal, Koramangala, and HSR Layout

·      Urban Vault plans to enter markets in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Pune in the coming year

Urban Vault, one of the leading managed office space providers in India, on Monday announced the addition of 10,000 desks across major micro-markets of Bengaluru as part of the company’s strategy to expand its portfolio to meet rising demand for flexible workspace.

Founded in 2018, Urban Vault currently has 15,000 desks across 40 centres in Bengaluru. The total area under its portfolio is 10 lakh square feet. With this latest addition, Urban Vault’s total inventory of managed co-working seats in Bengaluru will surge to an impressive 25,000.

“There is a huge demand for managed flex spaces from corporates of all sizes. We are expanding our portfolio in a big way. We are adding 10,000 seats across prime locations in Bengaluru,” Urban Vault Co-founder and CEO Amal Mishra said.

The company will add around 3,000 seats in Sarjapur Road, 3,000 seats in Hebbal, 2,000 seats in Koramangala, and 1,000 seats in HSR Layout.

The average rental cost per seat is Rs 10,000.

With addition of 10,000 desks, Urban Vault’s total portfolio will reach 25,000 desks in Bengaluru. The number of centres will increase to 45 and the total area under the portfolio will reach 15 lakh square feet.

“Flexible workspace has become a preferred option for corporates looking to expand their businesses. Even those companies which are accustomed to traditional office setups are opting not to renew their lease agreements, instead transitioning towards co-working spaces,” Mishra said while talking about the potential of the flex space market.

Mishra highlighted that managed office space offers flexibility and helps corporates save on capital expenditure. “Corporates do not have to worry about managing physical infrastructure and housekeeping of their offices,” Mishra said.

Urban Vault’s innovative solutions and customer-centric approach have been instrumental in its success. From private offices to virtual spaces, the company delivers tailor-made, high-quality solutions. This allows businesses to redirect their focus towards their core activities, while Urban Vault takes care of their workspace requirements.

Leading enterprises such as BluSmart, and Gensol Group have already recognized the value of Urban Vault’s flexible workspaces. These spaces foster agility and innovation, making them a magnet for high-calibre professionals.

Looking ahead, Urban Vault is poised for extensive expansion, with plans to enter markets in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Pune in the coming year. This strategic move is driven by the company’s vision to offer its transformative workspace solutions to a wider audience.

Also Read: The future of Co working spaces: Innovative designs in technologies to boost productivity

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Finding a right workspace in Delhi that suits your business needs as well as fits in your budget can be a daunting task, especially for a beginner. We have prepared a detailed beginner’s guide to choosing a coworking space in Delhi that you should follow.  With the right guidance and in-depth knowledge of commercial real estate, you will be able to find your perfect office space at the best location in Delhi. Now, the question arises which workspace option is better for your startup company – conventional office setup or coworking space. Well, given the current scenario in the corporate world, more and more companies and young startup owners are giving preference to coworking spaces due to their flexible terms and affordable rates.

Everyone knows that there is no dearth of coworking spaces in Delhi NCR but still you can’t just take a lucky dip to select where you’re going to work from. Here are some of the important things to keep in mind while finalizing any workspace: 

1. Check Your Financial Affordability

Financial planning is one of the most important factors of establishing a new business venture. Hence, it should be done properly, especially at the start-up stage of your company. It doesn’t matter whether you are a self-funded company or receiving investment from another entity, you must make the best use of your resources. So investing large sums of money in office space makes no sense. If you want to work from a coworking space in Delhi, do your homework before deciding on one. Coworking space amenities vary depending on price and location. So, stay within your budget and avoid overspending on shared workspace.

2. Location of the Workspace

Location of the coworking space is another crucial factor that you should keep in mind before committing to any terms and conditions. You should avoid having your workplace at an inconvenient location. Facilities like easy access to transportation such as buses and metros, places to eat and parking space are essential elements that you should always consider when choosing a coworking space in Delhi. You don’t want to get stuck in traffic and waste your time and energy each day.

3. Evaluate Amenities

There are multiple coworking spaces in Delhi that provide numerous amenities to their members. Some of the most common amenities offered by these shared office spaces are – high-speed internet, meeting rooms, conference rooms, pantry, printing and scanning facilities etc. Evaluate these amenities carefully and analyze what kinds of facilities you will be needing to run your business operations.

4. Check the Ambience of The Space

The ambience of an office space creates a huge impact on the productivity of employees. People who work in a bright and airy environment are more productive during the day while dingy workplaces make employees feel bored and unmotivated. Therefore, office ambience plays an important role in keeping employees’ spirits high. When you go for a site visit, notice the ambience of the coworking space properly and analyze whether you will be comfortable working from there every day.

5. Learning and Networking Opportunities

The concept of coworking spaces is very popular among young working professionals because of the networking opportunities they provide to their users. You will be surrounded by other go-getters like yourself, who would be willing to help you out to grow in your field. Such an environment is perfect for bouncing ideas off each other, sharing resources, and collaborating on projects that would otherwise be impossible without the support of others in the workspace. 

6. Ask About Security

Apart from the location and amenities, security is also a major aspect to consider before booking a coworking space in Delhi. Please look into the security protocols of the coworking space carefully. Do they keep an entry log? Are there CCTV cameras on the floor? Is the neighbourhood well-lit at night? This is not directly related to profits, but providing employees with a safe environment to work in will reduce distractions and make them happy about working for you.

7. Read Reviews

Before selecting a coworking space, read online reviews about it. This will give you an idea of other members’ experiences and allow you to make an informed decision

To sum up, choosing the right coworking space in Delhi could be a challenging task if you don’t have proper knowledge about commercial real estate. Therefore, it is advisable to take the advice from experts prior to signing any document. Check for all the essential factors such as location, prices, amenities, environment, security, and brand image, only then book your office space.  

Also Read: Shapoorji Pallonji Real Estate signs Shahid and Mira Kapoor to endorse its VANAHA project in Pune

The post Beginner’s Guide to Choosing a Coworking Space in Delhi for Start-ups appeared first on Square Feat India.

In line with this partnership, Grant Thornton has taken customised set up in Awfis’ Eco Centre (Awfis Gold centre) at Acropolis Mall in Kolkata. Along with Grant Thornton, Awfis has also partnered with Teleperformance, a global digital integrated business service provider, and Conneqt, a leading digital IT and BPM services provider for over 1000+ seats at Godrej Waterside and Technopolis centres respectively. In the past, Awfis has also partnered with electronics giant Samsung for over 500+ seats in Kolkata. 

Flex players are now taking up spaces in malls and hotels to expand their presence as startups, SMEs and enterprises warm up to the idea of shared facilities over owned premises. Given the above, Awfis is taking the collaborative workspace model to newer spaces like hotels and malls to meet the hybrid workspace demand, which has skyrocketed post-pandemic.

The Awfis environment provides a unique amalgamation of different workstyles while providing the company’s employees with amenities and benefits such as meeting rooms, a well-designed collaboration area, a multi-cuisine restaurant, concierge service along with full hygiene and safety measures.

Commenting on this association, Amit Ramani, Founder & CEO, Awfis said, “We are delighted to have a leading establishment like Grant Thornton as a key client. This valuable partnership is a game-changer for the industry where large corporates have realised the benefits of flexible working and are increasingly shifting from a centralized conventional office to decentralized and distributed flex offices for their workforce.”

Sumit Lakhani, Deputy CEO, Awfisadded, “The trend of using flexible spaces in commercial real estate portfolios of large organisations is witnessing unprecedented growth and will become more prominent in the coming future. The flex space take up from large corporates in Kolkata is a clear reflection of the surge in demand that we are seeing pan India across all metros and tier 2 markets as well. Flex players are now being seen as valuable partners in setting up highly customized, efficient and agile workspaces by companies of all sizes.” he added.

Sanjay Mehta, Executive Director – Workplace Enablement, Grant Thornton Bharat said “We are delighted to partner with the leading flex space provider, Awfis, for our hybrid workspace needs. The vibrant tech-enabled environment, provides the right mix of a corporate office ambience combined with new-age elements for collaborative engagements and enhanced innovation. This will help improve our people and client experience.”

Currently, Awfis has 9 centres in Kolkata spread across premier and sought-after locations that include Acropolis Mall, Chowringee road, Salt Lake, IT Hub in Salt Lake Sector V, etc., and plans to add 2 new centres in the next 3 months.

Also Read: Awfis partners with Nucleus Office Parks to launches Awfis Gold Centre in Mumbai

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Awfis, a flex workspace provider, has inaugurated its first premium category centre – Awfis Gold in Mumbai after the successful launches of 5 Gold centres in Bengaluru, 2 in Hyderabad and 2 in Chennai. The Mumbai centre has been launched in partnership with Nucleus Office Parks, the operating platform for fully owned Blackstone offices in India, with the goal to deliver an unparalleled workplace experience to the Mumbai clientele through its premium offerings.

The centre is spread across 27,000 sq. ft with 450 seats and is located at One International Center, Lower Parel which is the epicentre of entertainment and offices. It is also highly popular as a premium commercial area due to its proximity to the sea link and upcoming metro stations and coastal road. With the launch of the first Gold centre in Mumbai, Awfis will now provide premium quality spaces with an enhanced focus on service excellence and superior infrastructure for their discerning customers with a key focus on large-scale enterprises.

Commenting on the launch, Mr Amit Ramani, Founder & CEO, Awfis said, “Given the rising demand of coworking spaces, Awfis Gold will emerge as the premium partner of choice for enterprises and CXOs who are now looking towards a hybrid model of working. Our newly launched Awfis Gold centre in Mumbai will provide Grade A infrastructure, state-of-the-art facilities and a world-class working environment that is certain to enhance productivity, safety & comfort. We are thrilled to partner with Nucleus Office Parks to provide this premium offering to our highly valued clientele in Mumbai.”

Currently, Awfis has 10 Gold centres spread across 3.5 lakh sq. ft. in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai with another Gold centre coming up in Mumbai in the next 3-6 months.

At the back of strong demand for flex workspaces, Awfis has now built the largest coworking network in the country with 131 centres and 77,500 seats across 14 cities and will continue to strengthen its foothold across India to establish a network of 200 centres by end of 2022.

Also Read: Awfis leases 65,000+ Sq. Ft. Flex Space for UNext in Bengaluru

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By Varun Singh

Demand for flex continues to surge as workplace transformation and portfolio strategies make a case for a more flexible, agile, and modern workspace.

As per a joint report by Qdesq and JLL titled Indian Office market: Recalibrating with Flex the aggregate enquiries for flex space witnessed nearly a 2X Y-o-Y growth for FY 2021-22. This translated to over 214,000 flex seats spread over 15,000 unique leads as recorded by Qdesq across the major Tier I and II cities. In terms of space, with 1 flex seat = 70 sq. ft of leasable area on an average, this translates to nearly 15 million sq ft.

• Enquiries for flex seats record a 95% growth in the same period
• 90,200 + flex seats were transacted in FY 2021-22 in the top seven cities
• Tier 1 cities account for 78% of total flex space
• Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Mumbai, together with lead in seat enquiries
• Number of unique leads, represented by entities either corporates or individuals, has grown by 53% year-on-year (Y-o-Y) across leading Tier I & II cities

Qdesq tracks the unique leads and flex seat enquiries on its digital and offline platform. JLL
tracks the actual flex seat transitions. Therefore, the data has been drawn after benchmarking leads and enquiries against actual transactions. Also, interesting to note
is that the average deal size (number of seat enquiries/number of leads) has increased by
around 27% – from an average of 11 seats in FY 2020-21 to an average of 14 seats in FY 2021-22.

According to JLL 90,200 + flex seats were leased across the top 7 cities by occupiers in FY 2021-22 which is a 2.5X growth Y-o-Y. This shows that demand for flex space has seen a significant resurgence over the past 12 months, driven by enterprises seeking to create a more agile real estate portfolio strategy in an evolving hybrid work environment.

62% of the seats transacted were taken up through the managed route, where the flex operator was curating the entire flex workspace as per the tenant’s needs. This outlines how flex is transforming as per the needs of the market from a pure coworking set-up to a more private office, managed space concept. This is reiterated further with seat enquiries showing a higher demand for private offices (43%) compared to coworking set-ups (39%).

Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Mumbai, together with lead seat enquiries

Delhi NCR leads in terms of unique leads and total seat enquiries. In fact, the top four cities in terms of seat enquiries – Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Mumbai, together account for about 74% of the leads and 72% of the seat enquiries, respectively. Bengaluru is the leading tech hub and along with Delhi-NCR forms the two major start-up clusters in the country and thus sees a significant demand also coming from big tech firms and well-funded unicorns

Flex seat enquiries up 17% Y-o-Y in Tier-II cities

Start-ups, SMEs, and companies in the fintech and e-commerce segments focusing on emerging economic centres and smaller towns for business growth and enterprises looking to tap into the talent pool of an increasingly mobile workforce are the mainstays of this rise in enquiries for flex seats in Tier-II cities as per the report.

Chandigarh, Indore, and Lucknow are seeing robust traction for flex enquiries. In fact, there is good traction across major Tier-II cities in the North, West, and South.

Bengaluru, Pune, and Delhi NCR together account for over 60% of the total flex seats leased in FY 2021-22 More than half of the total flex seats leased in FY 2021- 22 were in the form of significant-sized transactions of 300 or more seats. In absolute terms, Bengaluru saw around 25,000 flex seats leased, followed by Pune with around 15,000 over the same 12-month period. “The flexibility to expand or contract on-demand, shorter lease tenures, fully serviced, amenity-rich offices and being able to create workspaces of the future which act as magnets for returning employees and in the war for talent are key factors fueling the flex market growth. An increasing number of enterprises are expanding their usage of flex space in tandem with transformational changes with respect to remote work, mobility, and flexibility. We expect the flex footprint to grow to nearly 75 million sq. ft by 2025 from the current 40 million sq ft levels, riding the wave of enterprise demand for managed workspaces.” said Dr Samantak Das, Chief Economist and Head of Research and REIS, India, JLL.

MSMEs & Others’ category drive aggregate enquiries, but enterprises from tech and start-up ecosystems driving actual seat take-up

As per the JLL-Qdesq report, aggregate enquiries are driven by ‘MSMEs & Others’ category across non-tech industries followed by tech and startups. These three segments together account for 59% of the flex space enquiries. JLL’s data on actual flex seat transactions shows that enterprises across a wide spectrum but led by tech and startups are now driving conversations around demand for flex and even actual space take-up. Tech and start-ups together contribute 48% of the actual flex space take-up.

“Flex industry has grown drastically in popularity and adoption among Indian corporates of all sizes & scale, over the last few years. All forms of Flex – Coworking, Private managed office, and Hybrid on demand usage, are experiencing robust demand. Having said that, Coworking stands out as the best fit and solution for sub 100 seats requirement which is 90% of the market. Enterprises have been re-evaluating the office strategy and return to work equations. All the cues leading to a phenomenon of employee-centric and productivity-driven office strategy. Furthermore, the things which are constantly being validated are “Flexibility, agility & Decentralisation,” said Paras Arora, Founder & CEO of Qdesq.

We do expect that key groups constituting a fair share of the aggregate enquiries like education and fintech will feature more prominently in the seat take-up pie going forward as these emerging segments make a move from late stages of remote working to a more physical workplace environment.

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By Varub Sinhh

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people work and will have long-term effects. The pandemic and lockdown restrictions impacted all segments of the economy.

In 2021, the co-working sector had a roller coaster journey, Following the first phase of the Covid, companies and professionals returned to work, kicking out the year with a bang. The co-working space sector is resurrecting in the post-pandemic context, using the crisis as an opportunity.

Nakul Mathur, Managing Director of Avanta India says, “This is the ideal time for property owners to think ahead of the curve and collaborate with co working operators to make the best of their vacant real-estate spaces. This way, they can unlock the untapped potential of their vacant properties.”

Co-working is a concept in which professionals from various firms agree to share office spaces which provide a variety of advantages, including cost reductions, ease, leading edge infrastructure and decor, and networking possibilities. It is often seen as the way of the future. It has a promising potential. As a result, these spaces are regarded as one of the most rapidly rising trends in the corporate sector, particularly in the aftermath of the epidemic.

According to Good works, “There has been a huge surge in the number of co-working spaces recently both worldwide and in India. The total number of spaces is projected to hit almost 26,000 by the year 2022 – a 42% increase since last year, 2019. More than 2,500 new co-working spaces are being added worldwide per year.”

With that in mind, here are some of the most important co-working trends affecting the market as we approach 2022.

Hybrid workspaces:
Hybrid work spaces are the future of co-working since they are working models that are meant to provide employees maximum flexibility while preserving the physical element of working. In this approach, a worker may choose to login from home or occupy an office location while doing their daily tasks.

They are also regarded as the future of co-working as major corporations seek ways to reintroduce their workers without compromising the mobility and comfort that they have become accustomed to while working from home.

Meanwhile, co-working can save businesses money on office space and provide economic opportunity for other facility owners as hybrid co working spaces can be found in hotels, restaurants, and other locations. The facility owners want to take advantage of the potential to expand their operation and find new ways to generate more money. Depending on the time of the day, restaurant, gyms, and event facilities might be used as cool working spaces.

“Several companies across the globe had asked their work force to work from home and increasing number of people now want a mixture of working from home and going back to the workplace. As highlighted in a survey by Prudential, “68% of global workers now prefer a hybrid workplace model where there exists a flexibility to work outside the office occasionally.” From the cost-saving perspective, both organisations and employees have saved a great deal of expenses from the hybrid model. In the post-pandemic world, a mix of office and work from home arrangements are going to be an omnipresent trend,” Mathur added.

Landlords Step Into the Co-working industry:
Due to the epidemic scenario, demand for traditional office spaces has dramatically decreased, resulting in a decrease in rent and the conversion of houses into work spaces, which creates competition for co working operators as homeowners are introduced in the game.
Rather than collaborating with co working space providers, landlords and property investment groups are beginning to transform themselves into flexible office space providers in order to capitalize on this opportunity by developing their own flexible space and they will go head to head with the service providers after launching their own co working segments.

“Co-working as an industry never fails to surprise, and 2022 is likely going to witness yet another year of its relentless growth. Beating the pandemic blues, the co-working sector is going to see newer trends emerge, including but not limited to, adapting to the guidelines of wearing mask at public places, sanitation, hygiene, and social distancing, change of space layouts according to these mandates, price correction at individual market levels, and restructuring of co-working packages for corporations, start-ups, and freelancers.” says Siddharth Maurya, Resource Specialist – Fund Management.

Work Near Home will be more popular:
The epidemic prompted a significant shift to remote working throughout the world where companies have realized that they are unable to achieve desired employee productivity and social connect from work from home scenario. This can be influenced by a wide range of factors, Poor connectivity and colliding of work and personal life, a lack of availability of suitable work space and employees’ fear of commuting long distances in public transportation such as metro, buses and shared cabs and the organization understands and respects their employees and is prepared to spend for membership in co-working near their homes. This demand for suburban co working space will almost certainly result in the opening of new facilities in 2022.

Co-working is adapting as per the need:
The co working business has progressed significantly. Despite the pandemic, coworking spaces have shown to be incredibly robust, and are poised for development as they adapt to it and respond to the new remote work trend.

Also Read: Bhushan Kumar Of T-Series Paid Rs 167 Crore For Juhu Bungalow

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