What's Fueling the Flex Office IPO Boom?

After Awfis, IndiQube and Smartworks, two more are in the pipeline for a public listing

- Madhurima Nandy

During a board meeting of IndiQube Spaces Ltd mid last year, WestBridge Capital, a long-time investor, asked Meghna Agarwal and Rishi Das why they weren't considering an initial public offering (IPO).

The wife-husband duo co-founded the Bengaluru-based flexible workspace provider in 2015.

A month later, they took the IPO proposal to the board.

Two factors were at play. First, venture capital and private equity investment had slowed over the past few years, leading to new-age companies turning to the public markets for funding. In 2024, 13 startups, including Swiggy, Ola Electric, FirstCry and Blackbuck, went public. Second, Awfis Space Solutions Ltd became the first flexible workspace company to get listed in May 2024.

So, a decade after it was founded, IndiQube went public, becoming the third such firm in the sector, after Awfis and Smartworks Coworking Spaces Ltd. Its ₹700-crore IPO was subscribed 13 times.

Shares of Indiqube listed on 30 July this year at 216 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), marginally down from the issue price. Meanwhile, rival Smartworks, also founded in 2015, raised ₹582.6 crore. Its shares, when listed, traded slightly above the issue price on the BSE.

As the commercial office market in India turned around after the pandemic, it saw strong demand pushing adoption for flex workspaces. These offices are shared and companies can rent for varying duration. In India, flexible workspaces come in two forms-co-working, where multiple companies can share the office premises, and managed offices, where space is cus tomized for individual companies.

A cross-section of companies across sectors, including global capability centres (GCCs), have driven up leasing, and expansion. Flex leasing jumped from 7.9 million sq. ft in 2022 to 15.8 million sq.ft in 2024, as per property advisory CBRE India. The share of flex space leasing in overall office leasing grew from 14% to 20% during this period.