Co-working, which started about 30 years back, is the latest trend in the world of work and was pioneered by IWG Plc. Harsh Lambah, country manager – India, IWG Plc, in an interview with Ateeq Shaikh says going forward, this trend will continue for a decade and then change in terms of design, palette or format. He also shared the company's plans. There is a bigger focus from large enterprises on co-working right now. If you look at any of our workspaces, about 40% would be large enterprises, another 40-45% would be small and medium enterprises while start-ups and professional entrepreneurs may be just 8-10%. We think from our visibility right now, for the next eight to ten years, this trend of co-working is going to be very strong, and then it might adapt, change a little bit more. There might be a move towards home offices, offices at airports, at railway stations, not only commercial buildings per se. It's no longer that Tier-2 cities are behind metro cities. The commercial real estate development there and the planning there is as good, if not better than the major metros. So that's again a trend that is going to happen. We are always looking at Tier-2 cities but I will give you a background on that. Today, we have about 120 workspaces across 16 cities in India. Nobody else has gone there. In each of the Tier-2 cities, we have tasted tremendous success. In Indore, we have opened our third workspace. In Ahmedabad, we are going from two to four. In Chandigarh, we have opened two. In Vizag and Jaipur, we have expanded. There is a lot of commerce happening there, and hence a lot of potential in Tier-2 cities. In 2017 and 2018, co-working was the fastest-growing industry in the world. Everybody and anybody came into this business. There are about 200-plus players in India today. They were all expanding, setting up their operations; now what is happening is consolidation. A lot of them either don't have the funds or don't have the cash to expand. So, there is going to be fragmentation and consolidation in the industry. There will be acquisitions and there will be a lot of players who will just have to shut shop because building scale in this industry is tough. So, right now there's consolidation happening. We are looking at growing in three ways. One is organic, putting our own centres in place. Second is through acquisitions. We are being approached by a lot of parties out there who would like to either get investment or get funding. Third is through what we call our franchise plan; that is something we are very focused on. We want to look at a franchise strategy for India. So either that would be led by one single plan in terms of giving the country to one party or franchising different states or different regions to different parties. No, this would be under Regus or Spaces brand. Our requirement, our need for putting up a particular brand is decided on the market, in the business environment there, on the stock of commercial real estate and the ability of our brand be successful there. The ones who have got into the industry but not been able to build or sustain their model. It will be difficult for them to hold on for long. We have been approached by many players and we are taking a look at their value. These would be in the markets where we don't have a location. We are looking at micro-markets and also new cities. We need to be in Cochin, Trivandrum, in Punjab, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. We will look at that once we have our franchise strategy in place. We are already there. We are in Sri Lanka; we have seven workspaces in Colombo. We have two workspaces in Dhaka in Bangladesh, and one workspace in Kathmandu in Nepal. And based on the opportunities there, we would be expanding our strategy also. We would be expanding our presence in other countries but India is the major hotspot for
IWG Plc is taking a 2 -pronged approach to growth in India , according to country manager Lambah : organic growth, acquisitions and franchising. India has around 200 co-workspace providers, not all of which have the funds to expand, Lambah said, and he predicted closures and consolidation in the sector. Plans for the franchising business include finding a single partner to take a master licence for the whole country, or a number of partners each taking a different region or state. The company currently has 2 centres across 16 cities in India , including tier 120 cities which Lambah said have been very successful.