Given the rentals are very high especially in Bangalore, where the office is located plays an important role in terms of cost, branding and given the traffic, it even becomes a factor for the potential hires to accept the offer. Best practice perhaps would be to start-off in a co-working space for 6 to 12 months and then perhaps move to a separate facility if needed. It is also difficult to find office space for 50-100 people set-up in a branded space (most of the big names won’t even talk if the requirement is less than one single floor). Starting off in a co-working space also relieves the India team of taking care of things like networking, catering, designing the office space etc., A post-covid phenomenon is the addition of hybrid and remote models, which has a bearing on the space required. The critical decisions at this phase are:
- Decide on total space requirement (preferably for 3,6 and 12 months) and find a suitable space. Space requirement should also take into account how many days we’d want engineers to be in office each day (best practice: for the initial few months people should predominantly work out of office)
- Decide on whether to rent or work out of co-working space.
- Decide on broad area(s) where we’d like the office to be
- Decide the co-working space vendor or hire real estate agents to find a place, based on all of the above.
- Choice of STPI or SEZ – the two tax incentive schemes. Whereas any office space be labelled an STPI, SEZ has certain restrictions and therefore has a bearing on the location.
Good to know:
- The rental space comes in 3 flavours and the rent varies from highest to lowest:
- Fully furnished (cubicles, conference rooms, networking, private offices are already done). No or limited flexibility. Usually this office would be occupied by someone and who have left after their lease expired
- Warm shell (networking and carpeting are done). We have the flexibility to design the office as per our requirements.
- Cold shell (just the four walls). Maximum flexibility.
- Best practice would be to go with the fully furnished option.
- Several builders are notorious for not following all the building codes. It is therefore essential to make sure that the paper work is accurate.
- Employees expect some amount of inhouse catering or have the office in such a place where it is easy to get food. As trivial as it may sound, lack of food options could create a major dissatisfaction even in the age of food delivery ops.
- Rentals come with a huge security deposit (often 6 to 12 months). This upfront cost needs to be factored-in as a part of set-up costs.
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