According to a latest report by a real estate firm, flexible workspaces or co-working has contributed close to 13% in the total year-to-date Q3 office leasing, reporting a two times growth from last nine months of 2018. The report has been released by Colliers International recently.
The report states that the need for such workspaces and a collaborative work environment has increased demand for flexible office space for the second consecutive quarter.
Giving more information on the report, Karan Virwani, CEO, WeWork India said, “At the beginning of 2018, we set out with the aim to double our locations by the end of the year. We are well on our way to achieving this, and we plan to expand to booming cities such as Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad by next year to reinforce this commitment.”
From last few years, with the rise in the prices of commercial property, the concept of flexible office spaces has gained a lot of momentum in the Indian real estate market. A survey which was released a few months back stated that co-working firms leased 19 lakh sqft in January-June 2018 as compared with mere 6.4 lakh sqft in the first half of 2017. In 2017, co-working took 5% of the leased space in the country.
The survey said that these days many startups and small companies prefer co-working spaces to conventional office spaces due to lower rentals. Hence, savings on operational costs and a more flexible work environment. A company can save as much as 30% on the operational cost alone.
Also, Co-working helps companies to save on other operational costs such as IT infrastructure, fitments, housekeeping, broadband connectivity etc. Some of the leading players who offer co-working spaces are, Wework, CoWrks, International Workplace Group that operates Regus and Spaces and Awfis.