The Spacemaker
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MEGHNA AGARWAL, Co-founder, IndiQube
Space has always been close to Meghna Agarwal's heart and she understood how space worked for diverse companies. As per her, "In my quest for revolutionizing workspaces, I along with Rishi started this journey with IndiQube in 2015, as a flexible workspace solution catering to the holistic needs of Enterprises, Offshore Development Centers, SMEs and Startups." During her entrepreneurial journey, she had first-hand experience that enterprises, for their office space requirements, are faced with challenges like volatility, high capex and long-term leases. As a solution to this problem, Meghna & Rishi went on to create IndiQube, a managed office space brand that provides end-to-end solutions starting from Space to Interior Design & Build, Operations & Management of workspaces.
IndiQube currently has about 3.5 Million Sq.ft. of Area Under Management in 6 cities with 50+ properties. They have deeply penetrated in startup hubs like Bangalore & Pune where they are amongst the market leaders and have also expanded footprint to Hyderabad, Chennai, Noida & Mumbai. During its initial days, IndiQube on boarded companies like Bluestone, KPMG, Freshmenu, Cohesity, Eximius, TMF and many more who were amongst the very first clients. "With large clients buying into our vision in the very initial days, coupled with the positive feedback that we have received about our product, our belief in this model was reinforced and we got the ammunition to go big in this space," shares Agarwal. Both the founders, Meghna Agarwal & Rishi Das started off the business pooling their own resources and later, Ashish Gupta (Ex-Helion Ventures) came in as an angel investor, and then, WestBridge led the next round of funding of USD 15 Million. During the 6 years journey with IndiQube, they have served 450+ clients with over 70,000+ seats.
Their occupancy rate was 90% pre COVID-19 and it slumped to 75% during the pandemic, with many firms vacating their office spaces to save costs in the early part of the year. "COVID-19 has made enterprises reassess the way they consume real-estate. We are now witnessing a 50% increase in inquiries originating from large enterprises primarily due to the need for workspace rationalization. In the post COVID era, enterprises will be more cautious about their commercial real estate costs and would prefer flexible workspaces that minimize their exposure to high Capex & long-term leases," shares Agarwal.
"We have 350+ full-time employees out of which more than 25% are Women."
Over the next two years, they plan to reach 1,20,000+ seat capacity. Beyond that, they see a potential to add at-least 30,000 seats year-on-year. On one hand, this growth will be fueled by a deeper penetration in existing cities where they plan to be in 70+ micro-markets in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Noida & Mumbai. On the other hand, they will also expand into Tier II & Tier III centers by leveraging partnerships and exploring acquisitions of smaller players in these markets. The company is also planning to raise INR 300 crore this calendar year from equity investment to further their expansion plans. On a more positive note, Agarwal shares, "Despite the impact of COVID-19, considering the gradual uptick in business, we are looking at an annualized revenue of INR 400 Crores for the current financial year.
