India’s already crowded and competitive co-working space is witnessing a new wave of fundings, as two local startups, GoWork, and Awfis, have recently secured their latest financing rounds.
Gurgaon-based GoWork received a USD 53 million debt funding round, which is also its first external funding, from investors including BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, and asset management firm CLSA Capital Partners. On the other hand, Awfis secured a 30 million dollars Series D round led by private equity firm ChrysCapital. This round is also participated by existing investors SequoiaCapital and The Three Sisters among others.
Two-year-old GoWork, currently operates two facilities in Gurgaon, plans to set up 50 centres across major Indian cities by 2025. Its campuses house a bar, lounge, gym, gaming arcade and more. Its clientele includes Paytm Mall, Impactify Consulting and Coverfox, among others.
Awfis, on the other hand, with a totalled USD 81 million under its belt, already operates across 63 centres in nine cities, and is looking to aggressively add more than 400 centers in the next 3 years. Some of Awfis’s clients include Vodafone, Reliance, Zomato, Hitachi and Practo.
The two successive capital injections into the co-working startups is a reflection of India’s potential in its flexible working market. The world’s second-most populous country now has more than 460 million millennials, accounting for 46% of its total workforce, who are more receptive to the idea of working from a flexible and tech-enabled environment.
At present, there are more than 350 shared office companies operating in more than 800 locations– under the business center or co-working space formats – across the nation, per a report by CBRE, a real estate services and investment company.
Other players in the field include international giant WeWork, 91Springboard, GoHive, and OYO Rooms which is a new entrant to the game. And the country’s burgeoning gig economy will continue to fuel the need to switch to agile workspaces that promote collaboration and productivity, bolstering up a sector that is estimated to be worth USD 390 million and will attract more than 13.5 million users by 2020.