In Conversation with The Office Pass, owner, founder Mr. Aditya Verma
What is The Office Pass? Tell us about the core team?
The Office Pass, popularly known as TOP, is a Neighborhood Coworking & Managed Office company. We provide office solutions to Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) in India. Our vision is to have multiple Coworking offices spread across the city – so one can reach the closest TOP office in less than 20 minutes.
TOP business was started in March 2017, we currently have 12 Coworking and Managed offices across Delhi NCR (10 in Gurgaon with 1 each in Noida & South Delhi). Over 100 companies are using our office solutions. TOP business is EBDITA positive.
The TOP core team is ex Makaan.com team. TOP was founder by me along-with Nikhil Madan, Sachin Gaur and Saket Bijpuria as co-founders. I look after company’s strategy, growth and statutory compliances. Nikhil looks at all demand side initiatives. He drives sales and customer retention. Sachin looks at all supply side initiatives and vendor management. Saket is in-charge of operations, digital marketing & analytics in the company.
How did you get this idea of starting neighborhood coworking space and how is it different from coworking spaces?
Neighborhood Coworking is different from conventional coworking as at caters to an audience within a radius of 5 kms. The fundamental premise is that founders (and people in general), love to work in a high-end office space close to their place of residence or business, rather than commuting long distance to reach an office. This saves them valuable time, effort and money that can be utilised to further their business.
We encourage people to #Walk-to-work. This is our way of solving the commute and pollution issues and contributing to the society at large.
What services does The Office Pass (TOP) deliver majorly?
We have two popular services, Neighborhood Coworking and Managed Offices. Under the former, multiple small & mid-sized businesses (SMBs) take up 2-500 seats in the same office where they share common facilities like café, meeting and conference rooms and toilets. Neighborhood Coworking product helps SMBs reduce office operational expenses by 18-24%. It also give them the flexibility to expand or reduce seats as per their business requirement. This flexibility is hard to get in a conventional office model. Companies using our Coworking services can use any of our office i.e., if you have taken an office in Gurgaon and you are travelling to Noida for a meeting, you can spend the rest of the day at our Coworking office in Noida.
In the Managed Office service, we get involved with the company at a very early stage. Here TOP helps the company to identify / shortlist an office in their preferred area and budget. We work closely with the company to prepare the floor plan and interiors of the office. The entire office furnishing is done under close supervision of TOP employees. Once the space is ready, TOP manages all office services as an operator.
One can think of a Managed Office service as a project where TOP get involved from conceptualisation to fulfilment & management. Managed office is generally preferred by large companies and MNCs where TOP comes in as a real estate expert.
In both these services, companies get a high-end ready to move in office with facilities like ergonomics desk and seats, hi-speed WiFi internet, meeting and conference rooms, printing, air-conditioning, office security, tea and coffee, manpower to run office support services and admin etc. Companies get a single invoice for all these services so they don’t have to deal with multiple vendors.
What is your clientele like?
TOP’s core clientele consists of small and mid-sized business (SMBs) having manpower of upto 500 employee. These companies find it extremely difficult to find, furnish and operate an office space due to limited bandwidth and finances. They also remain under the radar for property owners and developers who are unable to identify these companies in a cost-effective manner. TOP acts as a bridge between these SMBs and property owners. We take office space of 10,000 SqFt, furnish it and make it available to these SMBs on a per seat basis on flexible terms.
TOP is able to pass on two major advantages i.e., flexibility and cost saving. This makes it a win-win for both the sides.
In March 2022 we heard that you added 1300 seats in NCR? How do you think this expansion is working out?
Around Nov-Dec 2021, India was coming out of the pandemic and companies were contemplating returning back to the formal office. TOP had taken a 30,000 SqFt office in Gurgaon around that time. It was a 600-seater office and in the normal course it would have taken us 5-6 months to fill these seats. As we started marketing this property, we experienced un-presented demand (demand of the type that we have not experienced in the past). To our surprise, we were able to achieve 90% occupancy within 75 days.
There were two main factors responsible for this positive surprise. Firstly, post pandemic, companies were preferring Coworking over conventional offices. They did not want to be tied-up with long term conventional leases without any flexibility. This was a positive development for the coworking industry. Secondly, many small Coworking players, who were unable to manage their operations during the pandemic, had shut shop. This meant that all the post-pandemic demand was coming to players like The Office Pass (TOP) who were able to successfully navigate through the pandemic.
It was with that background, we decided to accelerate the pace of our growth and announced addition of 1300 seats in Delhi NCR within a short space of time. We continue to experience good demand. In June-2022, TOP offices are running at 90% occupancy and we are EBDITA positive. This is a huge achievement in an industry where profitability is not easy to achieve (especially due to damage caused by the pandemic).
- What are your views on customer experience? How has the customer experience of your business been?
Customer experience is fundamental to any business without it no business can thrive. When we started the business in 2017, our quarterly customer attrition was around 15% and it took us a long time to figure out the reason behind this high attrition. It took us over 12 months to bring it to a manageable level.
COVID-19 pandemic hit the industry without any warning. Lockdowns and #WFH were the new normal. When pandemic stuck, we lost 73% of our paid members in 30 days. Customer experience or not, many of our organisations were unable to sustain their operations thru the pandemic and some decided to #WFH and never come back to office. It was a dark period for the business.
Post pandemic, we made many structural changes to our customer acquisition and retention strategy. The results have been transformational. As we speak, we have a customer retention rate of over 99.5% per quarter. This was made possible by pro-actively reaching out to companies before a problem surfaces. TOP also ramped up its focus on health and hygiene to make our members feel comfortable in these times.
Improvement in customer experience is an ongoing activity at TOP. In the July-Sept quarter, we are going to start a “Customer Happiness Index” which will be published internally. Every department will take steps to improve the index score. We feel this is key to make TOP the best Coworking brand in the country.
What values do you believe in and what role do they play for this tech devoted platform?
I would like the TOP leadership team and it’s employees to build integrity and trust with all stakeholders. Our interactions with customers, vendors, investors and people at large should leave a present memory in their mind. People should remember TOP as a brand they can trust and recommend to others. It’s a tall ask but every interaction of ours is a baby step in this direction.
I personally try hard to live up to these values and expect the same from others.
Key decisions in the company are taken looking at their long-term positive impact. We are hungry, but in the long-run. We generally avoid short term temptations.
I am not building this business to please any investor. I do what is good for the business and where there is agreement in the leadership team. I feel, eventually this approach will help us build a long lasting and a profitable business.
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