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Move over start-ups, even established players seem to be ditching conventional offices for co-working spaces. Leading FMCG company, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB), which is the bottling arm of the Coca-Cola Company in India, has decided to open a sales office in a co-working space in Pune.
Currently, the company’s sales offices are either located close to its distributors’ offices or at the factory site.
This will be its first attempt to test the co-working space model, in line with contemporary workspace trends. Based on its experience at Pune, the beverage major could look at similar options, in other parts of the country in the future.
Christina Ruggiero, CEO, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, said, “This is our first shot at having our sales team work out of a co-working space. Albeit small in terms of the set-up, it’s a new way of looking at things for a conventional FMCG company like us. If all works well and our employees feel good, we would explore for similar set-ups but at this time we are flexible about things. As a culture, we are pretty much an open office culture, but as a concept, this is our first from a co-habited space.”
Co-working spaces have seen an explosion in the country in the past two years. A report released in January, by Anarock Property Consultants, stated that India’s rapidly increasing millennial workforce is expected to spur the demand for collaborative workspaces as they are looking for swankier, flexible and cost-effective office spaces that effortlessly embrace the latest technologies into their system.
There are over 200 players operating the current stock of more than 420 such workspaces (both branded and unbranded) across the country, which is expected to increase two to three folds in the next two years.
Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Property Consultants, said in the report that as companies are aspiring to tap into this new generation, they cannot ignore co-working. “Co-working spaces are also proving to be cost-efficient by nearly 15-25 per cent by cutting down rental costs, fixed-capital investments and property maintenance,” he added.
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