[Manager] Being a community manager in a coworking space — Meet Akshat from 91springboard

During our time in India, we were thrilled to meet Akshat, Community Manager at 91springboard in Delhi. He has a true passion for people and thrives to build the best community around the space. We loved his dedication and passion and decided to ask him a few questions about his take on building community in a coworking space. Enjoy!

Hi Akshat and thanks for taking the time to answer our questions! Could you please tell us a bit more about yourself?

Hey Pauline, I am an avid gamer, a tech geek and delighted to be a Community Manager at one of the 91springboard coworking hubs in the National Capital Region of India. I am based out of New Delhi, IN.

You work at 91springboard, could you tell us about the idea behind it?

91springboard is a brain child of three minds — Anand Vemuri, Pranay Gupta and Varun Chawla.
The venture was officially launched in January 2013 out of a small space in Mohan Estate, New Delhi. Almost four years have gone by and 91springboard today operates out of five major cities — Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Goa, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. We also have 14 coworking hubs with the latest, our largest till date, recently opened in Bangalore, JP Nagar — a 50,000 sq.ft. space capable of housing 1,200 plus members in a thriving community of freelance professionals, idea-preneurs, and entrepreneurs.

You guys have grown very fast, how many spaces do you have and how many cities are you present in?

We are present in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and the newest addition — Goa! We have 14 hubs across these locations and cities. One of these 14 hubs is a Fintech Growth hub based in Mumbai in partnership with Barclay’s.

What would be your own definition of coworking?

My definition of coworking is — Co=community and working. Community working. Working at a coworking space gives you a platform and a space full of individuals working in different areas, it’s just not about an office space, it is working with a vibrant community consisting of Entrepreneurs, Idea-preneurs, mentors and freelancers.

We visited 4 spaces of yours in 4 different cities and we have been very impressed. How do you guys build such great communities?

We can’t disclose our secret sauce. :P
Jokes apart, our team thrives on solving for members, for instance if their pet is unwell, we will suggest them a good veterinary or if they raised funding, we go bananas!

That is what we do, we treat our community as our family and make sure they are happy. They are our priority.

Oh and, if there is no one to take care of their pets at their place, we welcome them with open arms at our hubs.

How do you support your members ?

We believe in a member-first outlook, which is followed company-vide. Actually, I can’t say we follow this philosophy, it’s more of a natural feeling which all of us at 91springboard have developed. This comes naturally as we notice and see our members hustling throughout their day.

We provide support in the following ways:

• Office space solutions
• Mentorship
• Booster Credits — Value Partners
• Networking Events
• Startup Support solutions
• Most importantly — Community Support!

What is your main goal when opening a space?

Our idea is to build collaborative workspaces, simply because we believe when two great minds collide and interact, something greater is born out of it. Our goal is to achieve this with every one of our spaces while keeping the numbers efficient and affordable.

What is your biggest achievement at 91springboard?

My biggest achievement is that I can now better understand people and what they are looking for. Many times, a member might not directly come up to seek your help, asking for a particular thing. There is some guess work and decoding involved. I remember how in my initial days, I didn’t have a clue on how to solve for things. I think I have picked a few things from here and there and can now do a decent job at helping people. :D

What do you think are your biggest challenges?

Biggest challenge would again be, understanding members. Each community of members is different, each person in that community is a unique individual. I believe it takes a good job to decode a person and what he or she may like.

For instance, me and my team have now come to pace with our community in the Okhla Hub, after good 6–7 months. We now have curated events, workshops and sessions suiting their specific needs. It has been giving us a good response but it still remains one of the biggest challenges for me and our community teams across our hubs.

What are the future plans for 91springboard?

Anand Vemuri, co-founder and CEO of 91springboard stated in a recent interview after a recent funding round,

“We’ve seen the demand for our coworking spaces grow rapidly in the last two years, from startups, freelancer and large enterprises alike. 91springboard has grown very quickly in this time — our 14th hub went live this week — and we will use these funds to further ramp up our growth, and bring our offer of increased productivity, collaboration and growth to customers in more areas and markets”

Thanks Akshat!

The full selfie with the rest of the team is here :)

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