Neetish Sarda

  BENGALURU: Park+ on Wednesday said it it has partnered with managed office space provider Smartworks to provide automated smart parking solutions Park+ will enable campus administration for the flex space provider by automating parking allocation and managing seamless entry and exit of vehicles in and out of the premises. The unique RFID tag affixed on every car will ensure the movement of authorised vehicles only. The solution will help save time where real-time parking slots availability will be visible to members through Smartworks mobile app.   "Both Smartworks and Park+ are working towards elevating the experience of corporates and office-goers across metro cities. The users will now be able to check the real-time availability of parking lots on a mobile app, which will help them save time, reduce stress and save on fuel," said Amit Lakhotia, founder, Park+. With more people looking at personal vehicles for daily commute, companies are partnering with Park+ to ...

  Managed office space providers allow maximum agility and the additional benefits of value-added services to clients. Large monolithic buildings will become a thing of the past as employees will congregate in open spaces. Key magnet locations, such as the headquarters and regional offices, will become smaller in size but will remain highly amenitized, keeping in mind the pre and post-COVID scenarios.  The shift to a hybrid model is inevitable, but will no longer be limited to providing laptops, comfortable workstations, vibrant offices to the workforce. Instead, it will be aligned with elevated needs and behaviours of the workforce. Office space providers have to change the way they have been managing the offices. By providing latest touchless tech upgrades in addition to configured spaces, sitting arrangements, reframing employee touchpoints, offering a vast array of amenities, such as coffee and snack bars, grocery shops, concierge services and commute facilities to the c...

  NEW DELHI:  Smartworks , a homegrown co-working startup, has leased 2,50,000 square feet in  Hyderabad ’s Aurobindo Galaxy, taking its total operational space in the city to 4 lakh square feet, a senior executive of the company said on Tuesday. This, at a time demand for flexible office spaces has risen after pandemic-induced lockdowns. Companies are weighing a hybrid working model—work from home and office—amid the need to maintain social distancing to reduce the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus. In fact, Smartworks is on an expansion spree—planning new facilities in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, and more coworking spaces in Hyderabad,  Bengaluru  and Pune. “We have actually doubled our footprint in Hyderabad. Hyderabad is an important part of our strategy. After Bangalore, it is the largest in terms of size and potential. Our first facility, Purva Summit, is 80-85% occupied by enterprises and high-growth startups,” said Neetish Sarda, founder at Sma...

  Smartworks , the home-grown shared office space provider, will invest up to Rs 100 crore in expanding its presence in the national capital region (NCR), its founder Neetish Sarda told ET. The company is in the final stages of acquiring 5 lakh sq ft in NCR. “We are seeing a lot of traction in Noida so more than 90% of our future inventory will come in Noida. Our existing building is almost fully occupied so we are on the lookout for fresh property. The new asset should be ready by October,” said Sarda. According to a  Knight Frank  report, co-working operators took up spaces selectively across NCR in H2 2020. From a 3% share in H1 2020’s total leasing, it increased to 12% in H2 2020. Smartworks acquires the entire building and converts it into a coworking campus, unlike other coworking operators that usually acquire a floor or portions of a commercial building. The company plans to have 3 million square feet of office space in NCR in three years. “There is...

  POST LOCKDOWN THERE HAS BEEN A SURGE IN FLEXIBLE OFFICE SPACE DEMAND DUE  TO COST AFFORDABILITY, CAPITAL EXPENDITURE, AND FLEXIBILITY. SMARTWORKS  FOUNDER- NEETISH SARDA SHARES HIS VIEWS.  HOW ARE CO-WORKING  SPACE PROVIDERS RETHINKING THEIR BUSINESS STRATEGIES? Pandemic has accelerated the need for managed office  space providers. Premium facility  management and de-densification  have led enterprises to consider  flex operators as they have become  crucial to their return-to-work  strategy. Flexibility has become  essential for enterprises, and by the  sheer nature of flexible managed  workspace, we are poised to cater  to the demand coming in for ‘third  space’.   WHAT ARE THE WAYS  COMPANIES ARE LOOKING  TO ATTRACT RISING, REMOTE WORKING CONSUMERS?  The priority for every business  currently is a safe return to the  workplace to contin...

As economies across the world contemplate on the next best move to find their way out of Covid-19, office space providers are grappling with troubles of their own. The pandemic disrupted some of the best-laid plans of almost every industry vertical and one of the most severely affected was the commercial real estate sector.  As per a study by Deloitte, 50% of CXOs reported a 25% disruption in both business and work during the peak of Covid-19 last year. Manufacturing and retail operations saw the biggest of disruptions as 85% of these were impacted due to their heavy dependency on factories and unmovable machinery.  The hybrid model finds greater acceptance. March to September of 2020 was evidence enough for companies, especially large enterprises, to resort to various workspace models that ranged from work-from-home (WFH) to work-near-home. Now, many are turning their attention towards the flexible workspace model.  This has resulted in a ‘Hybrid Model’ where a company ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has just about changed the way businesses will continue to operate, and this more so relevant to the workspace sector; don’t expect things to be similar to the pre-COVID -19 days. Since the beginning of this decade, there has been some level of shift when it came to the way businesses perceived workspaces. Over the years, work-at-office gradually allowed for ‘work-from-home’ (WFH) as technology caught on and employee experience gained importance.  Some companies (more so the IT and ITeS) began to implement the same in some form or the other with employees being permitted to work at home a few days a month.  Technology has slowly become an integral part of the workspace sector and now, continues to be indispensable.  As we stand, ‘tech-enabled’ workspace seems to be the name of the game and promises to be the future of workspace sector. What is a tech-enabled workspace? A tech-enabled workspace is that which is supported by technology to a more morp...