At a launch ceremony held in Delhi today, Oyo debuted its foray into plug and play corporate infrastructure. Dubbed ‘Workspaces’, this will be a series of different brands, varying on cost, seating capacity, facility among others, to cater to different kinds of companies.
Led by Rohit Kapoor, CEO, New Real Estate Businesses, OYO Workspaces is a fully controlled workspaces solutions provider. Oyo claims that this gamut of brands that it is debuting, is designed to meet the needs of over 80% of the working population in the country. The three brands that this ‘Workplaces’ business offers, includes the recently acquired Innov8 ( a chain of high-profile co working spaces across Delhi), along with two in-house developed brands — Powerstation and Workflo.
While Innov8 remains what it has been, Powerstation offers functional workspaces for small and medium scale business at the right prices. Workflo is more of a budget offering, with similar features as Powerstation.
Rohit Kapoor, CEO for Oyo’s New Real Estate Businesses and head of Workplaces, said, “The workplace as a service space presents an exciting opportunity for OYO to
utilize its existing technology and operational expertise. Through a targeted multi-brand strategy, we aim to provide a differentiated experience for co-workers at different price points and help expand access to coworking spaces to more and more businesses and professionals across the country.’’
At the time of launch, OYO Workspaces will open with 21+ workspaces, with
15,000+ seats across 10+ cities in India. Of these, Innov8 is currently spread across 6 cities of Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon Bengaluru, Chandigarh and Mumbai, with 16 centres hosting over 6000 employees. Prominent occupants includes Swiggy, Paytm, Pepsi, Nykaa, OLX, Lenskart, amongst others.
Powerstation has one centre in Gurgaon with over a 1000 seats and Workflo has set up 4 centres across NCR, Hyderabad and Bangalore with a hosting capacity of over 1500 seats already.
Spaces at these Powerstation and Workflo start with “introductory price” of ₹7999 & ₹6999 per seat respectively. OYO Workspaces aims to expand its presence to over 50 centres across India by the end of 2019.
OYO’s entry into the workspaces business is a definite bold step towards the hospitality startup expanding its playfield to the workspace led real estate sector. The success of this venture will be a tale that time will tell. However, co working segment is an aggressively growing segment in India, and with Oyo pushing in the kind of money into these that it is, things look bright for now.
