In the past few years, urban cities have witnessed an upsurge in the number of startups. In India, Tier 1 cities such as Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai have seen hundreds of new businesses crop up in the past year. While most of these startups are into all sorts of different businesses, they have one thing common – they’re based out of coworking spaces.

From budding entrepreneurs to emerging small businesses,  all of these ventures are starting out independently by setting up their office in coworking spaces. These shared spaces are offering much-needed functional and affordable offices to startups. They are helping these nascent companies build their business by working out of cost-effective, productive, and protective environments. Here’s how:

Flexible Leasing

All coworking spaces provide flexible leasing options to startups. Unlike conventional leases, where businesses have to commit to prolonged lease terms, coworking leasing is more tractable. Their month-to-month lease extensions offer functional and economical comfort to startups. Entrepreneurs can avail dedicated desks and the usual setup or consider working flexibly, where their office setups are moved around different locations on the same coworking floor and even across different locations of the coworking service company.

Low-cost Workspaces

The most important benefit for startups is the affordability of these shared spaces. Coworking offices are significantly the cheapest solution for setting up an office in urban areas. A typical coworking space in India offers workplace services at ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 per month for an individual.

This rent for single desk space includes services such as Wi-Fi or LAN connection with high-speed internet, 24-hr power backup, limited use of conference room with projectors (based on availability), and air-conditioning. Other amenities such as access to common areas, recreational areas or lounge areas, coffee, and ready-to-eat snacks are also offered along with these services.

Scalable Workplaces

Startups can size up or size down, depending on their business growth. This wavering magnitude of startups often results in economic problems. In some cases, they fall short of finances to scale up. In other cases, their downsizing leads to unwanted expenditure on unused office space and workplace resources.

With coworking offices, startups can easily scale according to the growing business. They can expand their teams with ease and change their work locations across the network of spaces run by the coworking service provider. It is also easy to modify the lease terms on any day of the month. New members can be on-boarded smoothly and finding an appropriate space for every coworker is never a problem.

Improved Business Visibility

Co-working office spaces give an additional advantage – business networking. When a startup joins a coworking space and sets up its office, it gains proximity to other startups and entrepreneurs around it. Independent professionals and startups from similar business verticals are able to collaborate and join forces on common interests. Startups can find eligible talents in the freelancers and can consider outsourcing some of their work based on mutual terms & conditions. Similarly, it is easy to recruit new members while working out of a large coworking office space.

These relationships enable startups to become more visible at local scales. By partnering with other startups and professionals, their business gains prominence and is able to create higher all-round visibility. With growing business visibility, startups continue to build stronger connections, securing their enterprises even more.

In these ways, a coworking space is able to nurture startups and provide them with an ideal habitat to thrive successfully in their competitive business landscapes.