2019 likely to be an exciting year for co-working segment

The demand for co-working and serviced office space has already seen a new scale of growth and is bound to witness a significant spike over the next few years. Developments in 2018 augur well for the co-working sector in the ensuing new year which has already gained widespread acceptance and success. Co-working is becoming the preferred mode over conventional office space for the new generation workforce and there has been a significant uptake of space both by co-working operators and end users. The demand for co-working is no more limited to start-ups and small-scale enterprises as now even the corporates and multinationals are opting for shared working spaces, thereby opening up promising opportunities for investors in the commercial realty segment. As per a recent report, the potential market size of co-working across India is expected to be 13.5 million users by 2020. It further highlighted that up to 10.3 million seats of co-working spaces will be occupied by enterprises by 2020. Freelancers and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) may contribute 1.5 million user worth of demand and start-ups are expected to demand around 100,000 seats. Interestingly, the demand for shared working space is extending to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities apart from the top 6 cities like Mumbai, NCR, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.