Co-working is not only a space business, but people business says Anand Vemuri, CEO of 91Springboard

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Anand Vemuri, Founder and CEO, 91Springboard

Q1. Tell us something about 91Springboard. What inspired you to start this venture? Share your journey so far with us.

91Springboard was founded by three friends, all of whom were technocrats and came from different business streams. One from finance, one from an incubation center at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and one from a medical devices company where he created patents. When these three friends got together, their first intention was to help companies with big ideas and big dreams that were too small to try and achieve them. This is how the idea 91Springboard was born to help startups and incubate them. As more startups came into the space, it was only natural to transform it into a coworking space. In fact, 91Springboard was the first coworking space in India, well before anyone else had set up their base in the country.

We established our first hub in Delhi in 2013 and have expanded to other cities over the years. Currently, we are present across eight cities with 24 hubs and have a capacity of about 18,000 seats. We are at 90% occupancy across our hubs which is remarkable as we had to rebuild ourselves from zero during the COVID pandemic. We are profitable and in the second stage of our evolution, which is to expand with better designs, offerings, and technology systems to help our members.

Today, we have a mix of people who come and work from our hubs, including freelancers, startups, SMEs, and even very large enterprise teams. As the business grew, the focus on helping members did not change, and providing an unparalleled customer experience remained the cornerstone of our business philosophy.

Q2. What were the challenges faced in the earlier days for attaining business objectives in terms of awareness, reliability, sales, and growth.

When 91Springboard started in 2013, we were the first coworking space in India. The biggest challenge, then, was that people did not understand the concept of coworking. The thought was that coworking was meant to be a hot seat where freelancers and people who would otherwise work in coffee shops would instead come and work from a coworking space. The idea of flexible work culture had yet to arrive, so building a company in a space without awareness of coworking was quite challenging. As more competitors came into the marketplace, people slowly began to realize that this was a legitimate way of working going forward. However, there was a perception that coworking was still an option to be considered by smaller companies or by people who could not afford their own office space and were not meant for large organizations.

There was also a phase when some coworking companies morphed into managing offices for large companies. In its essence, coworking implies a mixture of different kinds of people and businesses that come together, creating a symbiotic ecosystem.

Another challenge we faced was understanding how to cater to two different customer sets based on their team size – large and small. It is something we believe we have successfully overcome better than others. While other coworking companies would sometimes only focus on large teams and didn’t cater to the requirements of smaller groups, what worked to our advantage was our founding belief to help all our members, irrespective of their team size. Because of this approach, we have a healthy mix of people and teams that work in our hubs.

Q3. How has the coworking industry evolved over a period of time?

We must realize that the coworking industry is still a very young sector. It’s just around a decade old in the country. Typically, industries or categories of businesses take much longer than that to mature and then evolve into various forms. For the coworking industry, the pandemic was the one significant catalyst for extremely rapid evolution, which forced everybody to reconsider the future of workspaces. Large companies realized they didn’t want to be caught unawares if something similar like the pandemic were to happen again, as they were putting a lot of effort and money into building offices and buying real estate or having long-term leases.

As time evolved, companies realized that there would be rapid expansion and contractions within their organization which would be difficult to manage if they were stuck in their own limited office space. Coworking has changed all that and offered a very optimum solution through the idea of flexibility. At 91Springboard, we offer members the option to work from any of our 24 hubs across the country.

Another significant shift we noticed is how employers have realized that their single most important asset is their employees. During the pandemic, many employees returned to their homes in other cities and did not return to their workplaces. Today, employees are seeking to work remotely from different places. So, you now have a situation where employees are leaving companies and going to other companies or even starting up things independently.

Q4. Post pandemic, the commercial real estate landscape has evolved, boosting business for the flex working industry. Do you think this trend will go on in the long run? How have 91Springboard benefitted in these two years?

Coworking is here to stay and will expand its commercial real estate market share. During the pandemic, we managed to strategize and envision what the new coworking space should be and what the new norm should be. As a result, we are focusing on reinventing the new normal rather than following a trend.

We believe that if our customers don’t prosper, we don’t prosper, if they don’t succeed, we don’t succeed. This is because we are in the ‘people business and not in the ‘space business.

Q5. What are the unique initiatives taken by 91Springboard to cater to the ever evolving needs of their members?

Considering the evolution of hybrid work culture, we at 91Springboard have created suitable products for our members. As our hubs are operational 24×7, we devised rotational, and night-time plans for our members. Many members deal with companies that work in different time zones; therefore, our hubs are available for them at any point.

We are also working on the enhancement and adoption of newer technology. Currently, it seems restricted to providing high-speed internet or maybe dedicated servers and firewalls, but it is much more than upgrading the basics. For example, as we collaborated with ICICI bank, 800 of their members moved into our hub. We had to adapt to their needs and create many compliance measures to ensure that they had top-notch security, privatized access, dedicated servers, power lines, and more, which would make them feel comfortable. It was the first time a bank moved into a coworking space.

Adaptation to customer needs is the key to the problem. So, we are offering platinum design, layout, and amenities as we have studied how members react to spaces and how we can improve their emotional well-being while they are at our hubs. So, anything we do goes beyond technology; it goes into those little moments where one person meets another, and there’s a moment of connection.

Q6. Future and expansion plans in 2023?

In 2022/2023, hoping that the worst of covid is behind us, we are planning to restart our expansion plans which were on pause when the pandemic hit. We aim to have 3000+ seats in this financial year in 4-5 hubs in 3-4 different places. In 2023, we are looking to enter new cities into our fold. Notably, we don’t have a presence in Chennai and Kolkata, and we think these markets will be served well by our offerings.

Towards the end of 2023, we will also look at Tier II markets considering there is a clear need for expansion. It is not because real estate is available but because we think the idea of modern working is something that we should be able to bring to these markets.

Employees want to feel that they are a part of a modern work environment. As we approach the second quarter of the 21st century, we expect to be touching the 50,000-seat mark, and then in a couple of years from there, we should hit the 100,000-seating capacity. However, this depends on how the market evolves and changes, as we need to be conscious and sensitive to market realities.