The first WeWork space of India was opened in Bengaluru under the supervision of Karan Virwani, the director of WeWork India. On a short interview with Rukmini Rao from CNBC, Virwani shared his experience with WeWork and his vision for the future of coworking in India.
Within its first seven years, WeWork has established itself as one of the most popular coworking enterprises, perfecting the concept of shared workspaces in terms of keeping up with latest technology, mastering the community aspect of coworking, etc. About three years ago, while still working with his father at the embassy group, Virwani realized that small business sector in India was not being dealt with in any way. Big companies had all the high-end buildings, but the smaller ones were still working in terrible environments, such as rented apartments, coffee shops, etc. As a result of the massive startup boom in India, energy of young local entrepreneurs was boosting. Thus,Virwani came up with an idea to open a shared office space. While doing the research, he came across WeWork and decided to work with them.
Virwani believes that what differentiates WeWork from most other coworking spaces in India is the technology. More than 143,000 members from all over the world are simultaneously connected all the time through their application. Because of this, small companies can collaborate with designers, chartered accountants, lawyers and many other people when they have the need to. Such widespread and easily accessible connections are not available for other coworking spaces since most of them are limited to a couple of buildings and local businesses.
Moreover, interior design is done by their global team. The hallways, pantries, common areas are designed to be conducive for people to meet, interact and therefore collaborate. When someone walks up for a coffee, he is bound to bump into someone and start a conversation. These small human interactions end up leading to friendships and even business relationships.
Virwani talked about his plans to expand this venture in all the six major cities in India shortly. Next on schedule is Mumbai in September, and in Gurgaon and Delhi by the end of this year.
He clarified that WeWork and the embassy have no connections apart from initial funding and few shared services, such as finance and human resources. They take real estate from all developers in order to spread more rapidly and open new coworking spaces around the country.
When it comes to India’s appetite for coworking spaces such as WeWork, Virwani mentions that India has the youngest demographic in the world, with 800 million people being below the age of 35. Nowadays people are moving away from traditional workspaces to much more open and collaborative work environments. Therefore there is a huge demand for coworking spaces in India and more projects like this need to be under way.