Since a long time, the popularity of co-working spaces has been surging especially among startups. These collaborative workspaces provide its coworkers with a vast variety of world-class amenities at low-cost prices, thus helping them save huge investment costs. In India, these shared workspaces have seen a tremendous increase in the past few years thus leading to upcoming projects in many areas. Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bengaluru are among the few metros that have witnessed large investments, thus making them a coworking hub.
Co-working spaces have long disrupted India’s traditional work environment, witnessing a massive growth in just a couple of years. For years, Gurugram, a haven for industry giants and newbies alike has been home to such spaces that offer the ideal solution – low-cost office space with zero management overheads. The business hub of NCR, its vast landscape is full of huge edifices housing rows of stylish work cubicles, conference rooms, open desks, café space, living rooms, conversation areas and community hangout zones, with high-end technology, high-speed internet, and beverages & snacks available round-the-clock. Having revolutionized office practices all across India, today co-working spaces are a well-established entity in the modern Indian economy; they’re connected, convivial, commercially viable, culturally aware and collectively responsible. And now their latest contribution to the country’s business landscape is offering collaborative opportunities via event spaces for startups.
Take the example of the Summer Style Soirée, a summer fashion and beauty edit, that was a collaborative effort of HappyShappy – a New Delhi based startup and WeWork, a global giant in the shared working space industry. An Indian unit of New York-headquartered shared workspace provider, WeWork Forum in Gurugram’s CyberCity is the workplace of thousands of budding entrepreneurs, talented freelancers fast-growing startups, mid-scale businesses and large enterprises. What sets this mega-brand apart is that its low-cost physical place aims to foster strong community engagement and inspiring work-ethic while celebrating the diversity of culture. The place has a constant exchange of different ideas & culture, ample opportunities for networking, but more importantly, there are a plethora of events that empower talented individuals.
HappyShappy has found parallelism in this context. For their latest event, the company needed a place that was well-known for nurturing creativity and flexible work environment, and that matched its synergy; which is why the founders of this startup decided to host their event at WeWork’s premises. Says Nitin Sood, the co-founder of HappyShappy, “WeWork’s vibrant atmosphere played an important role in our workshop’s success. The Summer Style Soirée brought together a wide variety of audience members from the fashion & beauty industry – millennial girls that are working professionals, bloggers, budding artists, fashionistas, makeup enthusiasts and many other individuals. While the creative ideas, through research and hard work of our event partners provided valuable insights and experiences to the event, it was the communal experience of this co-working space that added four stars to the event.”
A strong community also translates into connections between “coworkers” happening organically. Instead of just sitting next to each other within the same workspace, coworkers explore the endless possibilities of starting businesses together, contracting within the community, sharing experiences and knowledge that help them to develop their enterprise, and being able to draw on the collective intelligence of the network for brainstorming and strategizing.
