Neetish Sarda, Founder of Smartworks “With the Pandemic having accelerated the need for flexible office spaces, and coworking market poised for growth with new entrants, expectations are for a new/ reduced TDS bracket for service payment to coworking spaces. We hope the budget would also allocate more funds towards IT infra spending as we believe technology and digitization are the way forward for commercial real estate and coworking segment in specific. There is a need for an industry status, single window clearance and reinstatement of Input Tax Credit in GST. We look forward to a stimulus to investments in commercial real estate in the upcoming union budget, thereby providing a significant fillip to the growth engine, creating jobs, and spur in demand.
Another wish in the pan is that the government should provide for allowance of capital expenditure incurred by the companies in the coworking segment.
Neetish Sarda, Founder of Smartworks Due to the advantages of ‘workspace-as-a- service,’ the coworking sector will witness a surge in demand from occupiers looking for flexible, upgradable, and adaptable spaces. The pandemic has accelerated the need for flex spaces with hybrid work model taking centre stage. The year 2021 will focus on low touch / contactless technology or smart offices for touchless transactions, ergonomic designs, safety first spaces, and sustainability. With work from anywhere gaining momentum, flex space providers with a strong presence stand to benefit as more corporations gear up for the hub-and-spoke model, taking up satellite offices closer to their employees to avoid long travelling hours.
Flex spaces are no longer just an option for corporations but will become a crucial part of their future strategy. The growing interest from enterprises in coworking spaces has caught the investors’ eyes, and one can even see the hospitality brands foraying into this space- so overall, the sentiment around the sector’s growth remains positive.
Neetish Sarda, Founder of Smartworks Managed office space provider Smartworks has leased a 5.6 lakh sq ft area in Pune, and invested around Rs 150 crore to set up a new centre as part of its strategy to expand the business amid rising demand for flexible workspaces.
Real estate consultant JLL India helped Smartworks in taking this large office space on lease in a premium commercial property ‘M-AGILE’ at Baner in Pune.
Noida-based Smartworks said in a statement that it has taken on a lease 5.6 lakh sq ft office space from a developer to set up its seventh centre in Pune.
Smartworks and JLL India have termed the leasing deal of 5.6 lakh sq ft as the “biggest” in the flexible office space segment.
The new centre, with a capacity of over 8,500 desks, has been set up with an investment of around Rs 150 crore, Smartworks said.
The new coworking centre will become operational in September. Around 40 per cent area has already been given on lease to corporate clients.
Smartworks founder Neetish Sarda said, “It has been a high growth trajectory for us in Pune in the last three years. Our growth has been driven by customer requirements for flexible office spaces that support collaboration, innovation and productivity”.
He said this new centre is the largest in the company’s portfolio and the flex office space segment.
Sarda said the company’s focus is not just to offer workspaces to corporate clients but a standardised and engaging office experience with value-added services and benefits in a campus-like infrastructure.
“Our digitally-enabled spaces provide them with a completely managed ecosystem with state-of-the-art amenities, alliances, community-building events, and networking opportunities,” he added.
With the seven centres in Pune, Smartworks now has a total footprint of about 1.4 million square feet and over 25,000 seats.
Overall, Smartworks has 31 centres, comprising over 4.2 million square feet area and more than 70,000 seats, in nine cities — Delhi, Noida, Gururgram, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata.
“We are excited to have facilitated the biggest deal to date for a flexible office space in India,” said Sanjay Bajaj, Managing Director – Pune, Logistics and Industrial, India, JLL.
Flexible space stock has grown in the Pune City by over four times from 0.7 million sq ft in 2017 to 3 million sq ft in 2021, he added.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
From open green spaces to trees that are so huggable to broad walkways to curated and high-end architecture, add to that an array of amenities and facilities–a place like this is a dream come true–for work or otherwise! In India, such workspaces or campuses with complete convenience, amenities, services do exist. However, these are accessible only to the top organizations as it requires a huge piece of real estate and finances to build the desired infrastructure.
Upon returning to India after completing studies from abroad, a young aspiring entrepreneur, Neetish Sarda noticed the striking difference between the workspaces in the West and India while visiting some offices. He wondered. Why limit access to such beautiful and modern workspaces only to a few and not all? How can he create a productive, engaging workspace and a place where people want to go rather than where they have to go? How can he make this more accessible and affordable across masses in India while enhancing their overall office experience?
He put much thought into giving employees a workplace centred around productivity, work-life balance and technology. He knew the relevance and correlation between a beautifully designed workspace and productivity. According to Neetish Sarda, the traditional workspaces were slowly beginning to evolve into modern formats. Still, that evolution wasn’t fast enough compared to the western world or the growing demands of the new-age workforce.
After witnessing limited innovation and lack of office experience in conventional spaces, Neetish Sarda, decided to create experience-driven flexible workspaces. He comes from a reputed business family, and it was expected that he would take on the responsibility of running the business when the time came. However, he wanted to create his legacy, and by then, he’d already thought of what he wanted to do next.
In 2016-2017, Neetish Sarda launched Smartworks with one location and slowly expanded to other cities in India. Under his able leadership, Smartworks has emerged as India’s largest tech-enabled, fully serviced Flexi space provider to Enterprises across nine key cities (Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad) with over 4.5 mn sq. ft. area under management. With over 95% enterprise clients, the company has seen a 3x revenue growth since inception and is the only player in the industry to remain profitable for the last three years.
Having pioneered the enterprise onboarding into flex spaces, Neetish Sarda has become the youngest founder leading India’s largest managed flex space. Enterprise DNA requires a different mindset, as their requirements are more oriented towards ensuring their employees have a happy and elevated experience.
His vision to provide members with well-managed, hassle-free, tech-enabled, inspiring workspaces can be seen in its fully serviced ecosystem that provides all services from basic to value-added at zero CAPEX. It provides a holistic office experience by offering facilities like meeting room, training room, sports area, gyms, recreational zones, pick up and drops, internet, video conferencing, hot desking, cafeteria, networking and engagement sessions, community events and more.
Neetish Sarda led Smartworks has created agile workspaces encompassing health & wellness, customization, flexibility and privacy into office space while ensuring a tech-enabled ecosystem and hospitality to its occupants. It offers enterprises fully managed, configured, and scalable workspaces per business requirements.
While building Smartworks, Neetish Sarda, instead of focusing only on the present, also kept in mind the future and role of technology in the offices. In the new normal, where technology and an employee’s well-being have all the focus, Smartworks’ tech-enabled ecosystem has been applauded by its clients. Smartworks has been able to make workspaces with designs and features in sync with the time to come.
Workplaces matter! Smartworks has a sharp focus on productivity and increasing employee happiness. The founders and their experienced team continue to build an ecosystem to deliver simple to complex services to wow the members.
The struggle between Passion and Profitability is never-ending. But can we all turn a profit off a passion? Well, here is a young entrepreneur, Neetish Sarda, who did! Not only did he make his dream of entrepreneurship come true, but with continuous improvements, he led his company to the top, competing with global and home-grown brands.
Neetish Sarda, 27, is the founder of India’s largest flex space provider, Smartworks. The company provides tailor-made, tech-enabled office spaces to Enterprises that reflect their ethos and brands. Smartworks, over the last four years, has become a leader in the end-to-end managed office spaces with over 400 clients, presence in 9 key metros, and over 30 centres. Under Neetish’s leadership, Smartworks clocked over 100 crores revenue in just two years of starting operation. It soon crossed the 300 crores figure to become the only cash positive, flexible workspace provider in the country.
After completing his studies abroad, Neetish Sarda decided not to join his family business and pursue his passion for creating something disruptive in India. At 23, he launched his venture Smartworks, a coworking and flex space then catering to startups and freelancers.His focus was on establishing workspaces that boast about energy and enthusiasm. He believed that a combination of facilities and convenience could lead to better engagement among employees. The idea of customized workspaces has also been notable for giving working professionals what they need to execute their tasks comfortably.
As an entrepreneur, you need to continually improve yourself and your business offerings to contend with the pace of the evolving world around you. Neetish Sarda, too, didn’t take much time to understand this in the crowded market of coworking spaces and all catering to the same TG. He went back to the drawing board, changed his business model from coworking to fully managed office spaces and pioneered the onboarding of Enterprises into his flex space. This untouched segment was happy and content in the traditional office setups. This change was risky, but he was persistent, and the rest is history. Today, the average size of a Smartworks space is 2 lakh sq. ft. as compared to a 10,000 sq.ft. Flexible space has its origins as a shared service for startups and smaller tenants. However, it is now witnessing huge space take-ups by large companies seeking to reduce the cost of real estate and increase their portfolios’ flexibility amid an increasingly complex and volatile business environment.
Neetish Sarda’s early learnings on the right client mix with longer tenures, stable cash flows and value-conscious customers made him lean towards becoming an enterprise-focused brand. His entrepreneurial skills and passion for business are evident in Smartworks attaining a leadership position within years of launch. As per a JLL study- (re)Imagine Flex Spaces: A 360⁰ View in 2019, Smartworks had a 14% market share, with the highest percentage of enterprise clients. Today, over 90% of its clients are enterprises/ Fortune 500 companies.
Neetish Sarda led Smartworks is a perfect example of the futuristic workspaces that are tech-enabled, right from the entry to the exit. Whether it is IoT-enabled meeting rooms, touchless coffee dispensers, Digital Entry, Digitized parking services, food services, or even sports activity booking, Smartworks ensures its members’ highest levels of safety and convenience. He aims to transform the traditional office landscape in India and redefine the Indian office experience by focusing on design, hospitality, technology and customer delight experience. The young leader is always heard saying, “we like to call ourselves an office experience company and not just a workspace provider”.
While living his passion and doing what he believes in, Neetish Sarda has created a profitable and sustainable business model while changing the face of flexible workspaces.
The crude oil prices are setting up new records globally which is effecting the price of petrol, diesel in the market globally. Due to this, the price of petrol and diesel are reaching high across the country.
On Wednesday, 26-30 paise in petrol prices and 34-37 paise in diesel prices were seen in major cities of the country. After this recent increase, the price of petrol in Delhi has reached Rs 102.94 per litre. Also, the price of diesel has gone up to Rs 91.42 per litre.
Delhi | The price of petrol & diesel in Delhi is at Rs 101.19 per litre & Rs 89.72 per litre respectively today
Expenses are rising each day for the common man Recently, milk prices have also been increased. Urge the government to reduce prices on fuel, says a local pic.twitter.com/eopju0aqhS
In Mumbai, the rate of petrol has reached Rs 108.96 per liter and the price of diesel has reached Rs 99.17 per liter. In Kolkata, the price of petrol reached Rs 103.65 per liter and the price of diesel reached Rs 94.53 per liter. In Chennai, you will have to pay Rs 100.49 to buy a liter of petrol and Rs 95.93 to buy diesel.
The prices of Petrol and diesel vary from state to state. It depends on the tax levied at the local level.
Meanwhile, Mahanagar Gas has increased the price of CNG by Rs 2.59 per kg and that of PNG by Rs 2.27 per SCM.
