Awfis FY19 revenue jumps nearly 3-fold to Rs 158 cr on rising demand for co-working space

Co-working operator Awfis has clocked a nearly three-fold jump in revenue during the last fiscal at Rs 158 crore on rising demand for shared office space from small to big corporates and startups, a top company official said.

Awfis, which was founded in April 2015, has become profitable at entity level from November last year and is targeting to launch a public issue in 2022, its founder and CEO Amit Ramani said.

The national capital-based firm has so far raised USD 51 million for growth of its business. The last funding was in July 2018 when it had raised USD 20 million (about Rs 137.57 crore) from a few investors, including Sequoia India.

"Our revenue grew almost three times in 2018-19 to Rs 158 crore from Rs 56 crore in the previous year," he told PTI.

Ramani said the company currently operates 63 centres, housing 30,000 seats, across 10 cities. It charges anywhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000 per seat, but the average cost is Rs 10,000.

"We are targeting to double our capacity to 60,000 seats by March 2020," he added.

The number of centres would cross 100 and the company would expand its presence to five more cities -- Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Bhubaneshwar (Odisha), Kochi (Kerala), Jaipur (Rajasthan) and Indore (Madhya Pradesh) -- by the end of this fiscal year.

"We are targeting to achieve a revenue of more than Rs 300 crore in 2019-20 fiscal," he said.

The company's monthly revenue has already touched Rs 20 crore and this is expected to rise to around Rs 35 crore by March next year, he said.

Asked about any fundraising plan, Ramani said the company does not require any fresh funding at this stage.

"FY18-19 was another strong year for Awfis from a business point of view which is a clear reflection of market sentiments and the positive customer response that our value driven product has been able to garner. We expect Awfis to grow exponentially in the next few years and we aim to go public by 2022," Ramani said.

On customer profiles, he said about 85 per cent of its seats are taken by small and medium enterprises as well as large corporates. The remaining demand comes from individual professionals and startups.

To tap the corporate demand, a new product -- Awfis Enterprise Solutions (AES) -- has recently been launched to provide exclusive and fully customised offices for companies across the country.

Under this programme, an enterprise can outsource the designing, building and managing of their 'own' office space.

Awfis CMO Sumit Lakhani said the company has provided its very first fully customised workspace for Blazeclan.

Under the AES model, Awfis can own and operate the centre for an enterprise or can just act as a service provider.