Innov8, the popular collaborative workspace provider has today picked up an undisclosed investment in its angel round of funding. The said fundraising round was enabled by LetsVenture and Venture Catalysts.
This angel round saw participation from a clutch of high networth investors (HNIs) including Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Google India VP Rajan Anandan, Freecharge founder Kunal Shah, Freshdesk founder Girish Mathrubootham and Facebook Messenger exec Anand Chandrasekeran.
This investment comes on the heels of a fairly recent funding round, where it secured an undisclosed investment from the likes of Dheeraj Jain of Redcliffe Capital and former Flipkart CPO Punit Soni. Talking about the investment, Rajan Anandan, Vice President and Managing Director at Google India says,
Early-stage startups in India struggle to find high quality, affordable office space. Innov8 solves this problem by providing this and also building a very strong community element in their spaces.
The Delhi-based company, operating under Guerrilla Infra Solutions Pvt Ltd, was founded by a trio including doctor-turned-investor Ritesh Malik, IIT alumnus Shailesh Gupta and Harvard University alumnus Sumit Ranka.
Innov8 works on the membership fee business model and provides shared workspaces with basic amenities (particularly Wi-Fi and snacks) to entrepreneurs, startups, freelancers, and even certain divisions of corporate giants. Also, it was also one of the three innovative startups that made it to Y Combinator, an ultimate boot camp for startups.
Armed with knowledge relative to the needs of Indian co-workers, Innov8 already runs well-established spaces in Delhi, Chandigarh, as well as Bengaluru — which has opened just recently. The company’s co-founder Shailesh Gupta has today shared the occupancy details of their co-working spaces, which are operating at 100 percent both in Delhi and Chandigarh.
There is currently an eight-month waitlist for grabbing a spot the Delhi centre. And co-founder Ritesh Malik has stated that the company is now cash positive at a unit level in both Delhi and Chandigarh. The week-old Bengaluru centre, on the other hand, is already operating at 60 percent occupancy.
As for today’s capital infusion, Innov8 is planning to stick with its expansion plan defined during the previous round of funding. It will use the funds to expand its presence across more metros, starting off with Mumbai, Noida, and Gurugram. There’s also the possibility of one of their centre’s popping up in Hyderabad in the coming months. Innov8 also plans to expand its current workforce to encourage community discussions of like-minded individuals.
