SUMMARY
The funds will help the company expand its operations
At present, the company has 8000 subscribed members
The company has seen 5X growth in revenues in FY19
Delhi-NCR headquartered coworking space provider, myHQ, on Wednesday (November 20), announced that it has raised $1.5 Mn in Pre-Series A funding round led by India Quotient. Singapore-based family office RB Investments, Ashish Goenka from Suashish, angels from the online platform LetsVenture and existing investors including Anupam Mittal and Nitish Mittersian also invested in the round.
Talking to Inc42, myHQ founders, Utkarsh Kawatra and Vinayak Agrawal, said that the funds will help the company expand its operations. They told us that the company is exploring expanding into Bengaluru and Mumbai.
Further, the funds will be used to introduce new product offerings and invest in the technology infrastructure.
myHQ: 15% M-o-M Growth And More
Founded in 2016 by Kawatra and Agrawal, myHQ uses an asset-light model to enable workspace solutions for its clients. The company is working on a revenue-share basis with spaces such as coworking spaces, offices, restaurants, cafes etc to utilise their space as a coworking solution.
It offers two solutions, where a user can either book a seat for INR 200/day under its visit-based model or book a monthly seat for INR 5K-INR 8K a month. All places offer standard workspace amenities including high-speed Internet access, printers, scanners and stationery.
At present, the company has 8000 subscribed members across 130 spaces in Delhi-NCR. The company’s clients include freelancers, business travellers, working professionals, startups etc.
Agarwal and Kawatra told us that they are now working on a corporate solution. The product is in beta stage. The idea is to enable a corporation to buy a coworking plan, and allow its mobile or remote employees to use the solution as and when they need.
The Growth Plan For myHQ
Prerna Bhutani, partner at India Quotient said, “myHQ’s asset-light business model makes it a strong contender for capturing the growing demand for co-working spaces in the country. They have built an early differentiator though offerings that cater to various segments of working professionals, at very attractive price points.”
Agarwal told us that the company has seen an average of 15% month-on-month growth rate. He added that the company has seen 5X growth in revenues in FY19.
At present, the company has noted that CPD and areas near metro stations see a lot of demand. Based on these data sets, myHQ is looking to enable coworking space solutions around 1 km of metro stations in the national capital region.
Along the lines of community building, myHQ also enables AMAs, meetups, etc for its community of users. One of the interesting things on myHQ app is the profile of users around the coworking space and enable conversations based on interests and work profile.
India’s Co-working Opportunity
As per a report by real estate consultancy firm CBRE, in the first quarter of 2019, the co-working space witnessed a 277% an upsurge in leasing to nearly 3 Mn sq ft. It grew up by 70% every quarter.
In the coworking category, myHQ competes with nearly 200 coworking spaces of India which include OYO, New York-based WeWork, 91springboard, Sequoia-backed Awfis among others.
From the beginning of 2018, India observed rapid growth in the establishment and performance of flexible workspaces. Such workspaces, complemented with coworking spaces, have come up with innovative ideas, better flexibility, and engaging activities, among others, to be at the forefront of the commercial real estate sector.
