Back With A Bang!

After touching its nadir during the pandemic, the co-working market has risen like a phoenix. With demand rising again, coworking players are expanding aggressively, too. But there is a vital difference this time around

- Arnab Dutta

WHEN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HIT INDIA'S SHORES IN EARLY 2020, AWFIS WAS ALREADY ONE OF THE TOP THREE PLAYERS IN THE FLEXIBLE WORKSPACE MARKET.

FOUNDED IN 2015, the New Delhi-based company had its footprint across 5 centres, with some 30,000 seats and a million sq. ft of co-working space under its fold. That, however, did not come to its rescue. As the country went under a stringent lockdown and confusion reigned over the impact of Covid-19, companies sent their employees back home, leaving co-working space providers like Awfis high and dry. Amit Ramani, Founder CEO of Awfis, says the firm witnessed a significant drop in business. At the time, some 55 per cent of its business was coming from smaller customers, who had leased less than 100 seats each. The smaller customers left and that obviously impacted us as our revenue dropped significantly,” he recalls. The impact was felt equally among other co-working space providers as well.

However, things turned for the better after the second Covid-19 wave began to recede in mid-2021. Enterprises went from work-from-home to hybrid work, and eventually several businesses asked employees to return to physical office locations. Result: the coworking operators were back in business. And how! Post the second wave, especially from July 2021, the recovery has been extremely strong,” says Ramani. Awfis has recorded a 400 per cent jump inits seat leasing compared to pre-Covid-19 days. If we were doing, say, 1,000 new seats every month, now we have touched 5,000. So, it’s five times.”

In fact, it almost appears like Covid-19 had arrived as a blessing in disguise for the co-working sector. In spite of the initial uncertainties over its future, the business has since come back stronger than ever.