This is smart works. Bengaluru. The world's largest flex space campus Smart Works, is India's largest managed workspace platform, with a presence in 13 cities, 40 plus centres and a growing footprint of over 8 million square feet, catering to over 550 clients, primarily for 2000. MN CS domestic enterprise, Unicorns, et cetera. Smart Works has not just redefined the flex space segment, but has expanded its offerings beyond just office spaces. They are now leading the charge in providing prop tech solutionss, cutting edge design as a service and much more. Hello and welcome to a special show. The Workplace Discoveries. We're Smart Works Bangalore, which is the world's largest flex space campus. Joining me in a conversation are two young, dynamic men who have transformed their startup into a torch bearer of innovation and vitality. Mr. Who is the founder of Smart Works and Mr Hasanni Co-founder smart works. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you with us on ND TV. I would like to start with you here, N, but just tell us if you could take us through the journey from being a Coworking space to India's largest managed workspace platform. But people like to think of this as a journey for us. It was a roller coaster, you know, we started off with a co working, which is the small format of taking up a floor in a building, giving it out for retail clients. But from there to move on into taking up a space like this which has over 18,000 people sitting out of their entire building, our focus was always towards enterprise and we wanted to Indian. You know how people look at co working in India and we realised that you have to create a product which is acceptable to the masses, which is valued at a certain price point which is acceptable to the masses and which can be scaled up across the country. And India is a very diverse country. We started off with one city, started off with Durga, but when we went to cities like Bombay, Pune, we saw it was a completely different world and every city had its own way of doing working of doing business and treating their employees, and you needed to adapt to all of those things. We've been lucky that we prevented very quickly from co working to managed office and then eventually to a large campus like format has. If I come to you, you know, I would have to read this here because there are several unique first for smart works in the world's largest office market. So I'm going to be reading them because I couldn't have learned, you know, read so many of them offhand. You all have entered 1000 CR club, right? You raised their little funding, which is $25 million in 2019 and scaled it to be the number one player with highest footprint. You counted for 10% of India's overall CR leasing became profitable earlier. Other than Indian and global players are being named also as a future unicorn ranked as one of the high growth companies in AAC as well. Tell us what is the secret behind this? Obviously, in building this institution, it's taken a lot of passion and hunger, which we hope we percolated down to every smart worker who works and together we as a family have scaled up the business to what it is. But if I were to just break this down into four or five key principles which have kept us in the stead. And they are, in some ways evergreen. A. We've always wanted to solve a very tough problem and stick to the first order. So when we were trying to create this new category, moving away from Coworking to what is now managed workspaces, it required a lot of design thinking because you were creating something which wasn't existing in the market, fundamentally getting large enterprises to come to auditors. And there you need to keep looking for inspiration from a lot of a lot of other industries per se. And second, quite frankly, while this is a new age business, the old principle of creating value for all the stakeholders and making sure that you are actually delivering profits and cash flows has kept us in very good stead. Because frankly, when you focus on profitability, then it gives you a superpower, which we feel today is an even more relevant superpower, that you don't have to depend on external capital, which is why you see that we have not been able to dilute as much, largely because it was a choice that we made would you like to add anything to what has said so The model that we have created is very thought of something that can be scaled, and our vision is not a five for five year vision. Vision is a much longer 15 to 20 year vision, which in the long run we think we to insulate the business from any downturn. This is just talking about the office spaces. Yeah, Smart Works has three of the world's largest flex spaces in its portfolio, and we are together here sitting in manga. What was your strategy behind leasing these huge in independent spaces? But what were you really thinking? So for us, when we were thinking about providing a managed office and our campus set ups, we weren't thinking of just providing workstations and tables, you know, that can be replicated by anyone. We were trying to cater to the aspiration of the new age, uh, employees, you know, the new age us. You know, millennials have exposure to a lot of social media to the Western culture. We've seen how offices in the West have, you know, created a more engaged platform where people are not just coming to work to just be on the table for eight hours or 10 hours in a day. It's more of a social environment where you're interacting with other people. You're creating your social friends and it's an experience. It's an overall an office experience that we were trying to create. So we never restricted ourselves to tables and chairs what campuses really allowed us to do when we started with campuses by the end of covid in 2020 20 we started with our first large camp, us. And what really helped us go through the entire process was the fact that we could provide so many amenities because just because of the sheer scale of the business. So if you look at this building, you've gotten things like a cricket pitch. You've got a futsal court, you've got multiple food courts. There's a gym. There's a crash. There is an empty theatre. There is auditorium. There are multiple things which which is required in your office space, right, and it has been shared by 28 to 30 different companies in the building. When are able to provide all of these experience to these large enterprises over and above the space, which they are utilising just for their office space. It gives a significant value to their business and not to just them, but even their aspirational workforce. You know, for them all of these amenities are something have not been accessible had someone like us not come and given them the size of amenities. If you look at the cafeteria here, we serve lunch dinner for over 10,000 people. So for us, our focus is always towards office experience, and we think the larger format help us create better experience for our enterprises. And that's why most of our growth is now happening towards the large format. Stewart, the largest enterprise, share in man space at around 90% which includes Bobs 2000, the Fortune 500 companies as well. What are the factors that drive the growth of man space adoption by enterprises? And how have these requirements we were to talking about before the pandemic? How have they changed? How have they evolved since the COVID-19 pandemic? The enterprise's choice for us was a very careful thought through decision in our early days when we were making the pivot away from co working to the manage workspaces format because the biggest draw of having enterprise was the fact that they give you a lot of predictable cash flows. They stay with you for long 10 years and frankly, they are the biggest users of space. And as we've seen the enterprise behaviour evolve, particularly in a post pandemic environment. Obviously, the expectation of an enterprise now has increased manifold because the workplace dynamics have evolved also meaningfully. And what was essentially a choice of, let's say, an enterprise earlier now becomes increasingly a choice of the enterprise and their employees as well. Because, frankly, work from home has been an entire new dynamic, which is coming to fold after covid. And the fact that you are able to packet so many amenities within the campus and keep them happy engaged throughout the day obviously makes it an entire proposition, which is very compelling both to the enterprise as well as their employees. But having said all of that, the Indian man still making sure that you give all of this yet make it more value price so that end up becoming cheaper remains consistent because we, as Indians, are very, very value and price conscious So if you're not really playing by the Indian rules, then quite frankly, you can scale up the way we've done over the last few years. You know, before we go on to the break, this one question for you is in terms of demand. Do you think that there is enough demand for managed spaces and does the Mac market have an appetite for over 300? I think the demand India's market is going to grow right. We are the office of the world now, and I think over the next couple of years, uh, your billion square foot of space in India, which is currently what our sizes will go up to about 1.2 billion. Wow, that means 200 million square foot of new space coming up. It is more demand which is coming into the market, right? And I think there is everyone will survive in this market. I don't think it's going to be a winner take take it all. But having said that, there's going to be differentiators right. There are going to be players who are going to focus on co working and then there are going to be players like us who are focusing more on the managed office solution for us. We don't think as co working as competition. I think our target is to go after the traditional office base to see how much of the traditional office space can we penetrate. Because most of the clients that are with smart works are also not co working clients. They are mostly people who have shifted their corporate headquarters or regional headquarters into our offices. So these are clients who would have either gone to a traditional office space and chose to come to a specialised office environment like ourselves, instead of, you know, going and making their own offices. I think that's really put well on that note. We're going to be taking a really short break, and this conversation will continue Post that. Keep watching. How do you ensure your business stays innovative and adaptable to changing trends as well as your clients demands? Because they are dealing with so many clients today, work from home. So many new concepts have emerged in the workplace dynamics, which weren't there earlier at all, and from that perspective, particularly getting a lot of enterprises to get their employees to come back to work, which is no longer the same workplace as it used to be prior to covid. Here you need a lot of technology to make the entire workspace contactless, ensuring that a lot of services that you were earlier dispensing physically is done in a tech enabled manner. Making sure that you are engaged throughout the office hours through more engagement activities fundamentally has altered what you expect from workplace and going forward. We do expect that any large occupier will start to think very figuratively about. Do I even need my own office? If I do, there has to be a reason. If not, can I actually really think about a flex way of office flex way of working, which works for I think everybody at this point, you know, like you were telling us about the whole concept. Like, how about workspace if I can ask you that, Yes, Smart works has not only redefined this entire segment of flex workspace segment, but it's also offered a lot more so if you can tell us a little bit about providing the pro tax solutions, cutting the edge design as a service, tell us what else does it entail? So for us, the workspace has to be on top of the workspace. Then it needs to be a tech layer that we're trying to create to make the entire experience completely seamless, right from the point that a customer is entering into the building. Can there be a smart solution for you to allow you enter into the building? Is there a smart solution that can help you park on a spot which is available and allocated to you after that when you come up to your floor? If you're using one of our facilities like the gym or you know the shows, you can book it pre book it in advance and see what the occupancy at that point of time is. After that, when you're at your workstation, you can. A lot of companies are now choosing to have flexi workstations in which you can just come and book the workstation where you want to sit instead of having dedicated desks, Can we use a layer of technology to make sure that people have the ability to do that? After that during lunch? Can you pre book your lunch right from your table? so that you don't have to wait in the queue when you down. You know, enabling technology to make sure that the entire experience is completely seamless is something that we are really focusing on. We have the ability of doing that because again we're managing these large spaces right where the numbers allow us to do it very well. But I think technology becomes very important when you're scaling a business at a certain rate, you know, because you're growing by almost 3 to 4 million a year. You can't just do it without technology. You need to have technology in all aspects. And that's why one of our focus is also creating our design as a service platform where people can actually come and choose out of a plethora of options that we give them upfront. It is from a design library that we've created over 60 designers on our payroll who continuously work on creating new designs for our customers, right. So how can we utilise technology layer to make sure that people are taking informed decision and seeing what are the options available to them? And that's why design as a service, a layer of technology to automate the entire office experience. And on top of that, we also have a thing which is basically called a clients spot, which is an interaction medium with our customers. How can you interact with your customers on an online medium as well? You know, in which, if they have any challenges in their offices, they can just raise a ticket. You can actually see the utilisation of your spaces in different parts of the country because we also have a lot of customers who are not just restricted to a centre but who have a portfolio spread across multiple cities Within smart works. There are customers who have six offices in six, all in one portal. They can actually see what is the occupancy, different cities. How many people of their people are coming on a regular basis, what other amenities that their employees are using? And what are the value added services that we can offer on a B to B model? Whether it's Internet, whether it's stationary, whether it's some of the value added costs or HR costs of doing town halls and all of those other events, can we take care of a lot of their day to day hassles and that all can be only done with the layer of technology. And I vividly remember during covid when we we had to actually go back and redraw our strategy. And today we are very humble that we have more than 5 50 plus best companies of the world. Uh, sitting with us, which, honestly, when we started, was more of a pipe dream. And given the fact that now we are 8 million square foot spread across 13 cities gives us a fair amount of satisfaction. But the aspect which obviously, you know as young entrepreneurs, keeps driving us What next? What else can you do? The journey of smart works at that point of time was obviously bundling a lot of services together and delivering it seamlessly through technology and using that layer to grow us faster. Now, as we are pointing out the new services that we've added to our portfolio, whether it's our figi commerce business of essentially making sure right from food, grocery laundry, which employees of the companies who sit with us can consume to the design as a service concept, all of this is literally unbundling a lot of services that we had bundled together and start to externalise and monetize that. And that makes us very, very excited as entrepreneurs to create something new and ensure that there is an opportunity that comes out of anything that you've done. Natasha, if I can just ask you like it's a personal question, uh, you know, you belong. I mean, your family has been, you know, doing business, and you belong to a very good business family. But when we talk about business, you know when there are, of course, highs and lows in in everyone's life. But business is something when there are lows, you know, you tend to doubt yourself. So tell us, were there any moments of self doubt through this journey? I won't call it a self doubts. Obviously we are fairly young. Companies also only been there for 5 to 6 years. I think there were multiple times at which we had to reinvent on what we were thinking. How was our focus on growth going to be, uh, how what is the positioning in the market or in front of our customers? Do how we would want to ourselves, and what should the model compile off right. We started off literally like everyone else in a co working model, but very quickly realised that that's a very crowded space and you need to pivot away from that. And then we make sure that we de risk the business as much as possible. Obviously, there is a risk reward ratio in every business, but you want to make sure that the business is insulated to any downturns that comes and honestly. Covid was a great example for us and hash to you like, Are there any learning? Or, if you look back, do you think you would have done something differently? What you did at that point during the initial years while you were setting up this entire conference? And both of us can almost author a book on that? Because there were so many learnings we had in our early days when we had to make that final pivot. When you had this aha moment, I finally found my product market fit. Manage workspaces for enterprises is what we want to do. But a few key learnings, I would call out, perhaps would be make it everyone's problem. Earlier, we obviously were brainstorming a lot of ideas between us, But the moment you externalise and make it open to everyone in the company and our company is fairly led by youth because when you're trying to create a new category, you're looking for fresh ideas. You're not looking for incremental ideas earlier. You perhaps relying a lot more on experience which truly is valuable, and it is coming to for today. But when you're trying to create something new, then no idea is a bad idea. Yeah, quite frankly. And secondly, keep looking for inspiration and that inspiration does not always have to come from inside. It can be from outside as well. So this one is for both of you. The last question. What is the long term vision for your company? Of course we've spoken about you know how you have reached there, what you are looking for. But if you talk about the vision and how do you plan to sustain growth as well as leadership in the future, so I'll go with you first. Obviously, India as an opportunity is very big for us to focus on this right now. But eventually our personal ambitions is also to obviously take this global as and then we can, right? Because there is an opportunity for for us to replicate what we've done well so far in multiple other cities like minded cities, especially in the South East Asian region. Or maybe some of the more developed cities also can adapt to a model like this, all the best for that. And hopefully we'll be talking about that very soon. Coming to you. Both of us are big believers in the India story, and the next decade truly belongs to the country and the market leadership, which we've been able to create in such a short period of time. We want to capitalise and sustain that growth. However, the bigger ambition is the fact that today we have only touched 100,000 lives. Can we, in five years touch half a million lives, make them more happy and productive because at the end of the day, you are creating a more happy, productive India in form of a workforce. And as we tune our global ambitions, a great product such as this, which is, by the way, made India the largest flex space market in the world. We are 10 times smaller than US in terms of just the Ari footprint. Yet India is a bigger market. In absolute terms. We are doing more leasing than even US. Can you create an Indian services brand which can be exported globally and create that entire unit where you're profitable, able to scale up where globally players have not been able to do it at scale and that truly will make this a great fulfilling story for us happiness at workspace? And I think it's so interesting to see young people like you coming and thinking of, you know, like future thinking or something like this, wishing you both all the way best, and thank you so much for speaking with thank you for the opportunity.
