Following a phenomenal response in the Coimbatore market, Bengaluru-based flexible workspace provider IndiQube is now looking for an aggressive expansion in the city besides foraying into other smaller towns of Tamil Nadu.
In March 2022, the workspace management company announced signing up of nearly 1-lakh sq. ft of office space in Coimbatore. The property has a capacity of over 2,000 seats tailormade to meet requirements ranging from a 10-seater to a 1,000-seater office space.
“The response from Coimbatore is phenomenal. We initially thought it would take at least one year, but within 3 months almost everything got leased out,” IndiQube co-founder Rishi Das told BusinessLine.
“The demand is very huge in Coimbatore but the city doesn’t have much supply. We are talking to leading industrialists and families in the city who have land to see if we can come up with built-to-suit options in Coimbatore in 12-24 months,” Das added.
The movement of spill over crowds from Chennai and Bengaluru, large number of educational institutions and industries and the new normalcy of remote working are some of the reasons for growing demand for co-working solutions in Coimbatore as well as other smaller towns.
IndiQube is also seeing good opportunities for growth in smaller towns like Madurai and Trichy.
“We are signing two more properties in Coimbatore, a 700-seater in Madurai and talks are on for properties in Trichy as well,” Das said.
Expansion plans
The expansion into these cities is part of IndiQube’s overall strategy to have about 15-16 Tier II cities in its portfolio over the next two years.
Das said post-Covid companies are no longer interested in centralising operations and instead like to work on a hub-and-spoke model with one centralised office and several distributed offices. This, he said, is an advantage for the coworking industry.
“Earlier people used to move where jobs are but now jobs are moving to places where people are. This is clearly a post-Covid phenomenon. People who went back to their native places during the pandemic are now resisting to come back,” Das said.
Besides Tamil Nadu, the company is signing up a 800-seater facility in Kochi and at a pan-India level it is looking at Lucknow, Jaipur, Indore, Bhubaneshwar among other smaller cities.