Gurgaon-based GoWork, a start-up that offers co-working spaces, plans to invest $1 billion (~ Rs 6,500 crore) over the next five years in setting up its 50 shared offices across India.

Owned by Nimitaya Group, GoWork's one centre in Delhi will come up by June while another one in Bengaluru will also come up by the end of this year. "We are in initial discussions with private equity players to raise funds," Sudeep Singh, chief evangelist, GoWork, said in a media statement.

The first GoWork first facility in Gurgaon is the largest is the world with 12,000 seats capacity, an area of 4.5 lakh sq feet and can house 8000 people. Located 100 metres away at Udyog Vihar Phase 2 in Gurgaon the second facility which today is the second largest facility in the world is 3.5 lakh square feet and can seat 5000 people.

GoWork, which offers co-working spaces to corporates, small and medium enterprises, start-ups and entrepreneurs, also plans to start a ‘Frustration Room’ in all its centres, which will help the professionals in managing their stress. One can go to the frustration room which will have sound-proof walls, and shout loudly or can just break things kept in the room to vent their anger or stress, Singh elaborated. As of now, the company plans to keep an old car for breaking with a hammer and safety gloves.

We are also in discussions with other firms to set up a creche facility in our centres, which will support working mothers as well as single parents, he said. GoWork already has Cox & Kings, Lifelong, Impactify, Flying Fur, WIP and Fixxoo as their clients. The start-up, which is in talks to raise $150-200 million with private equity firms this year, had raised its first round of funding from a family group Nimitaya Group.

GoWork operates on 80:20 model of ownership and leasing of spaces, and going forward, will maintain this, Singh said. The company wants to be present in every metro in the next five years apart from other cities and towns.

According to consultancy firm CBRE, the advent of co-working spaces is termed as the next wave of disruption in the office segment.

Co-working means shared office spaces with a new-age work environment. These centres have membership packages ranging from daily to yearly. It has private offices, fixed desks, flexible desks, virtual offices with all facilities of a hotel such as internet, gym, spa, cafes and common areas.

The above news was first reported in DNA.

The idea of co-working spaces has been gaining momentum in India. The total space leased by co-working operators in tier-I and tier-II cities is expected to reach almost 6-10 million square feet by 2020, as per CBRE.

In June 2017, the then Commerce and Industry Minister has had written a letter to all Members of Parliament (MPs) to consider setting up co-working spaces/incubators for Startups in their constituency under the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme Fund (MPLADS), informed ministry in a press release on Wednesday.

Last August, New York-based WeWork, the world's top co-working startup by valuation, starts building a core team to enter the National Capital Region and received whopping $4.4 billion investment from Japan’s SoftBank. Earlier in July 2017, WeWork opened its first community workspace in India – ‘WeWork Galaxy”, in Bengaluru’. As per the Crunchbase website, WeWork has raised nearly $10 billion in funding since it was launched.

In the same month, Huddle, a co-working incubator launched its centre and resumed its services in Cyber City Gurugram.

Last July, Delhi-based co-working startup Gurukul has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Indian international cricketer Yuvraj Singh. In the same month an another c-working spaces startup iKeva launched its shared offices in Gurugram And Mumbai.

In October, Haryana state government had also announced to open an entrepreneur centre in Gurugram.

Prior to this, the state govt had also announced setting up of first Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) in Gurugram under Haryana's new state startup policy.
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