Finding value in shared workspaces market

Sandeep Singh
Nov 3 · 3 min read

The culture of remote working and entrepreneurship is rising and a new market is emerging to service them. Shared workspaces.

The traditional way of leasing a space not just office space, spaces such as meetings rooms, conferences, classrooms, training rooms is not being appreciated by this segment of remote workers or even by enterprises.

So, a new product is required to serve them.

On-demand workspaces. (Pay when you need)

For Example:

  • Meeting room for 2 hours, pay for 2 hours.
  • Training room for 3 hours on weekends.
  • Conference rooms available anywhere.

This is all seems very easy. Why pay monthly rent when we can book them when we need them?

But, there is no provider in the market which provides spaces like this which can be booked through a website/ mobile app. Other than coworking spaces in a limited manner.

There are hotels, coworking spaces where you can actually reach out to them for a quote and book them on customized pricing.

It doesn’t work. Until your astrological skills are good. So, you can predict that you might need a conference room on 13th of the month at 10–12pm in some specific area of a city or may be near to office.

It is not over yet, the space provider should also be really proactive in sending you the availability and pricing as per your budget.

It doesn’t work.

So, what works?

You just need a mobile app where you can enter area, time & date with your purpose so you can see what are spaces available with pricing and book them instantly. It should be like booking a hotel room. Simple.

Quite easy, right!

But the story begin’s from here.

There are over 1,00,000+ independent workspaces available in India as of Nov 2019 which includes meeting rooms in hotels and coworking spaces. Well, the figure is just an approximate idea. There is no survey done yet to find out. I am sure the number is much more than that.

The inventory of all those spaces is not organized, not available online. Everything is offline, either in excel sheets or in Google Sheets :D.

Since, the information of all those spaces is not available online it makes this industry even more challenging as it requires a lot more effort in bringing the Spaces owners online and educating them the benefits.

On, other side the customer’s doesn’t have available options so they can choose and book spaces.

The Chicken and Egg problem

Customers don’t come until they see available spaces and Spaces doesn’t come until they see customers.

… to be continued.

FlexiSpaces

Meeting spaces, anywhere.

Sandeep Singh

Written by

A problem solver, love to interact with people who solve problems. Founder @FlexiSpaces

FlexiSpaces

Meeting spaces, anywhere.

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