This startup helps you to hire office space

The city of Nizams witnessed 128 lakh sft of office space transacted and about 109 lakh sft of new space added into the realty market in 2019.

During July to December, the total office space transacted was 89 lakh sft, of which, co-working space took about 13.6 lakh sft. On the back of demand from IT and ITeS companies, Hyderabad achieved this feat, surpassing Bengaluru.

Citing the city as a hot spot in today's real estate market, MeetingsandOffices.com, a Mumbai-based startup, will be setting up office here by next three months.

A Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade certified startup, MeetingsandOffices.com is an aggregation and online booking platform for office space, meetings, conference rooms, co-working space, day offices and training rooms.

Launched in November 2016, the startup is registered under the company Aufklarung Office Space Solutions India Private Limited.

Founded by couple, Meenal Sinha and Amitabh Sinha (co-founder and CSO), MeetingsandOffices.com won investment in a live funding event at the Nasscom Product Conclave in 2017. Hyderabad-based Kyt Ventures, a pan-India angel network founded by Dr Anu Gupta and Gagan Gupta, invested here.

MeetingsandOffices.com's service is available in 800 locations of 31 cities (including Hyderabad) across India, with over 1,000 facilities and more than two lakh workstations available on-board.

In the financial year 2018-19, the startup acquired 2,000 customers, with Hyderabad contributing about seven to eight per cent of the business.

"The realty market in Hyderabad is growing rapidly. Whereas the sector in top cities such as Mumbai, Gurugram and Bengaluru is moderate or saturated.

But, the size of deals, kind of floor plates emerging, and clientele in Hyderabad are the best bet," the founder and CEO of MeetingsandOffices.com, Meenal Sinha told The Hans India.

To accelerate growth, the bootstrapped startup is looking at raising funds in pre series round from angel investors this year.

The investment will be utilised for geographical expansion, advancing technology and scaling up the business. The startup used its initial fund and investment from Kyt Ventures, into developing the product and setting of team.

Soon, the online and mobile site platform will be available as a mobile application. And including Hyderabad, the startup will open physical presence in Gurugram and Bengaluru.

"Alongside business centres, we have listed shared and co-working spaces. And, Hyderabad is one among the top six cities for co-working space. Not only brands, but we also work with other spaces which otherwise customers will not be able to discover by themselves.

Startup entrepreneurs come on a shoe string budget and conserving resources is an important criteria. For them, a bundle of offering includes amenities, quality and right price," Sinha says.

During 2013, Meenal Sinha as the Country Head of a multinational shared workspace company got introduced to the perspective of creating economic sense through shared workspace.

She says, "When the term co-working wasn't coined yet, I had seen facilities vacant in builder projects, while office space was occupied the meeting rooms remained idle, 60-70 per cent global clients coming through referrals were lost in the Indian realty market and local real estate brokers didn't understand this market then."

Post research and understanding from investors and the industry leaders -- providers and users, the concept of MeetingsandOffices.com took birth to address the primary need of stakeholders in realty.

Sinha adds, "In early times, others players who had introduced a mobile app, shut their business. Competition came up and closed down.

We took it slow as many in this sector preferred doing business online than booking through an app. Now, it's the time to make users life simpler.

We have a road map planned ahead for next 12 months -- one being, to enhance the platform by making best use of Artificial Intelligence and blockchain."

Currently, the startup is a 10-member team in Mumbai. With the opening of operations and business development team in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Gurugram, they plan to added six to seven people. Their revenue model is based on commission, earned on each transaction from service partners.

Sinha claims the startup to be EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) positive with short-term business growing at 100 per cent y-o-y. With the expansion in place, she expects to see more than 400 per cent growth, in the coming year.

And foresees Hyderabad's contribution to exceed 15 per cent of the total business. "We will initiate the fund raising process this year and are happy to speak to interested investors," she adds.

A mentor with TiE Mumbai, Sheroes, Ideas That Scale Accelerator, and a speaker at various platforms, Meenal Sinha has received the Exceptional Woman of Excellence Award from Women's Economic Forum and Best Business Woman-2018 recognition from India Business Group.

"We weren't the first to set service standards, but were the first to define, how to deliver better experience for partners.

To us, everyone we interface with is a customer, so when building the minimal viable product, we ensured it would be an industry solution that supported both buyer and seller through technology.

For the buyer, its a simple search, compare, book, pay process. For the seller it's a comprehensive inventory management solution and not just another sales platform," Sinha concludes.