WeWork India Invests In Bengaluru-Based Zoapi To Enhance Hybrid Work Experience

Coworking space provider WeWork India on Thursday (October 13) announced its first investment in Bengaluru-based conferencing and collaboration platform Zoapi. 

Through this, WeWork India continues to reinforce its commitment to offering innovative and immersive solutions across different spheres by scaling up platforms like Zoapi, the company said in a statement. However, it didn’t disclose the investment amount.

Cofounded by Prashanth NS and Chaitanya Vasantarao in 2019, Zoapi is a SaaS solution provider that combines the four basic needs of a meeting room — wireless screen sharing, video conferencing, online calendar, and room scheduler.

It supports numerous video conferencing facilities and collaboration applications including Zoom, MS Teams, Skype, Google Meet, Webex, and others.

With corporates organically transitioning to a hybrid work model, there is a growing demand for a sense of community and the benefits of collaboration in a workspace. WeWork India intends to be a one-stop solution for large and small enterprises, freelancers, and startups and be able to enhance the hybrid work experience, the statement added.

Emphasising how technologies like that of Zoapi’s have become central to this change where businesses are increasingly looking for a hybrid work model, WeWork India CEO Karan Virwani said that from an adoption perspective, such technology is affordable and compatible with numerous video conferencing platforms and devices. 

“With its unique capabilities, this homegrown product has the potential to grow into a global player, implemented across all industries,” he said.

WeWork India, which started its operations in 2017, operates on a brand franchisee model that is controlled by the real estate firm Embassy Group. The originally US-based firm now has more than 6 Mn square feet of assets signed across 40 locations in the country in cities like Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad.

In April last year, WeWork India raised INR 200 Cr in debt and equity from two investors to expand its business and become profitable in the same year. The flexible workspace provider reportedly turned profitable at the holding level in the January-March quarter of 2022.

The company has been aiming for INR 1,000 Cr in revenue in 2022.

Bengaluru-based Zoapi sees WeWork India’s investment as a great opportunity to implement its product at scale. 

“Over the years, our strategic partnership with WeWork India has generated insightful data about user consumption patterns and needs. We believe that we can globally power conferences and meeting rooms with our SaaS solution,” said Prashanth, cofounder and CEO of Zoapi.

As per a 2021 CII-ANAROCK report, the co-working space market size in the country is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% over the next five years. It goes without saying that the Covid-19 pandemic has further boosted growth in the segment with more people choosing flexible working options.