HOW We Work is Shaloing The POST-PANDEMIC World In Conversation with KARAN VIRWANI

Work From Home or “WFH” is the latest trend, and it’s challenging to get folks to come to the office so much that the underlying sentiment is to quit rather than be confined to a desk space. WeWork has lots at stake, has prime-time real estate with 35 offices pan India, and is on a continually rising progress graph. We got Karan Virwani, 29-year-old CEO of WeWork India, with considerable stakes in the family-owned 3000 crore Embassy Group - one of the most influential names in Bangalore as a real estate developer. Ramesh Somani took him for a drive in the all-new Audi E-Tron in a stimulating conversation on startups, entrepreneurship, and everything in between.

- Ramesh Somani

RS: How did you get the idea of WeWork to get to India?

It all started with my journey to starting my own business. When I was out of University, I started a hospitality business that is still running to this day, and we have a few restaurants around the city as of now. While I was doing that, even with the infrastructure and background that I had, it wasn't easy to set up. When that happened, I went to work with my father and was training with him for almost two and a half years in the Embassy Group, where I just sat and listened to meetings and didn't do anything significant but learn a lot.

I got considerable exposure to the real estate industry in India, and I saw that we were building a lot of office spaces for large companies. Still, no one was addressing any office space for smaller companies or startups or smaller businesses, and that's where the idea of setting up smaller offices came into my mind.

Later on, when I was doing a lot of research, I kept reading about WeWork, and then WeWork came to India and looked for buildings for their expansion. That's where we met, and that's how we formed a partnership. It's been four years since we first opened our first building, and I think we changed a bit of the country's commercial office ecosystem.

RS: What has been your most significant learning in the Pandemic?

I think regardless of what business it is, the pandemic changed everyone's plans. We went straight into controlling the costs, so we shut down all unnecessary spending, but we were lucky to get a round of funding.