OYO Launches OYO Workspaces and Proclaims its Multi-Brand Approach

After becoming a big name in the hospitality sector, OYO is planning to expand its foothold further. The Indian hospitality company, OYO, having a run rate of $1.8 billion has proclaimed to acquire the prime co-working space, Innov8. 

With this acquisition, the hospitality company has also planned to foray in co-working spaces by launching its enterprise, OYO Workspaces. The co-working space is managed by Rohit Kapoor, CEO of New Real Estate Business at OYO. Besides this, Kapoor has proclaimed that OYO Workspaces will work along with co-working companies, Workflo and Powerstation, as reported by the daily news, Mint. 

OYO’s multi-brand approach is essentially designed to meet the needs of more than 80 per cent of the working demographic in the nation, according to the cited report. 

How OYO Workspaces is Expanding itself 

With the new multi-brand approach, OYO Workspaces will be opening doors to its over 21 workspaces along with more than 15000 seats in 10 cities. Out of this number, Innov8 is presently operating in six cities namely, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chandigarh alongside 16 centres hosting plus 6,000 employees of prominent brands such as Pepsi, OLX, Lenskart, Paytm, Swiggy and so on, according to above-cited report. 

On the other hand, Powerstation operates one centre in Gurgaon with more than 1,000 seats whereas Workflo operates 4 centres in 3 cities namely, the NCR region, Bengaluru and Hyderabad with a capacity of hosting plus 1,500 seats. 

 OYO Workspaces has decided to price its seats at INR 7,999 and INR 6,999 respectively and further targeted at increasing its presence in more than 50 centres across the nation by the cessation of 2019. 

“The workplace as a service space presents an exciting opportunity for OYO to utilise its existing technology and operational expertise. Through a targeted multi-brand strategy, we aim to provide a differentiated experience for co-workers at different price points and help expand access to co-working spaces to more and more businesses and professionals across the country.’’ CEO of New Real Estate Business, OYO, Rohit Kapoor told the daily news, Mint. 

Tough Competition in Co-working spaces 

As co-working spaces are in the nascent stage, it is reckoned that demands of co-working spaces, as well as that of  participants in the co-working industry, would rise. 

According to JLL’s reports, “Most shared office operations in India are also currently dominated by domestic players (almost 90 per cent), with global operators just beginning to make an entry into the marketplace. WeWork, the largest coworking space provider in the world, has been a recent entrant, with the first centre in Bangalore followed by Mumbai and Delhi NCR in the Indian coworking ecosystem. Many more players from the US are also set to enter India’s coworking marketplace. Interestingly, most plan to purchase property for their Indian coworking operations.” 

This exhibits that through OYO’s multi-brand approach, OYO workspaces may have to face competition in the new sphere. However, it has yet to be seen how OYO marks its presence in the new sector.