Induced by new startups and growing demand from corporates, freelancers, and consultants, co-working spaces are growing at an unbelievable rate. As per the industry estimates, India’s co-working space will probably receive $400 million in investments and by 2020, the number is estimated to grow from less than 100 in 2017 to 400 centers across the country.
Co-working is the future of work and offices. It refers to a style of working where individuals have access to each other’s critiques, opinions, and ideas, even though they work independently. A co-working space is generally an open floor format office with shared spaces for meetings, networking, and collaborations and is set up to meet the on-demand needs of occupiers. Co-working is gaining popularity among start-ups and boutique firms given that they offer flexibility without the need to tie up capital to a lease obligation. Reduced costs, no fixed capital investment, and increased flexibility are the foremost reasons for the rising popularity of shared spaces. It is anticipated that by 2020, co-working space will overtake the traditional office format.
Currently, there are around 200 premium business centers across the country that are set to double by 2020. Although there are less than 100 branded coworking spaces operating in India, this number is expected to expand by four times over a period of three years. Aggregated shared offices are set to reach approximately 500 centers by 2020 from their status of about 150 centers. At present, there are approximately 300 (branded and unbranded/organized) shared workplace operators in India, operating almost 720 centers across urban India.The potential market size for the coworking segment across India currently stands in the range of 12-16 million.
Of this potential market size, the total addressable market size for shared spaces across the six major cities of Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune is approximately 5 million. Mumbai offers the highest business potential with over a million people, followed closely by the National Capital Region (NCR) with about another million in need for working spaces, followed by Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune. Demand for co-working spaces is highest in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi NCR, and Bangalore.
Another major reason for the changing workplace is the way of millennials approach work. Millennials account for over half of the population in India. India is the youngest start-up nation in the world where 72% of the founders are less than 35 years. Flexible places are the preferred places for these millennials. Also, experts are of the opinion that millennials will have as many as four to five different careers in the course of their professional lives. Thus, retaining millennial talent would have to be an innovative mix of agile workshop design and alternative career choices that the organizations can offer within the same shared workplace.
Courtesy/By: Ikcha Sushil Kumar
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21 Feb 2018
