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= AWFIS = Awfis Space Solutions is a co-working ecosystem headquartered in New Delhi, India. It offers tech-enabled, affordable, community-driven workspaces for start-ups, corporate and freelancers. It introduces the concept of a workspace based on shared economy, enabling hassle-free and real-time booking of work desks and meeting rooms.

Presently, it has 35,000+ members and 500+ companies working from 21 centers that are spread across 8 cities in India.

History and Funding
Awfis Space Solutions was established by Amit Ramani in 2015, in close collaboration with The Three Sisters: Institutional Office, the family office of the CEO of Yes Bank, Rana Kapoor. The initial investment was $11 million. He observed an immense potential for the growth of the co-working ecosystem in the country. He also realized that Indian start-ups needed much more than just co-working spaces. Therefore, he introduced the concept of Pro-working that emphasizes on People, Proximity, and Performance.

His aim has been to enhance the accessibility of workspaces to the workforce by bringing workplaces closer to them because "no one sits at their desks and gets their work done.” He decided to build a “shared economy platform” for the “mobile workforce” as he wanted to “cater to this set of growing professionals in the country.” Since the inception of Awfis, Ramani has strongly believed in the idea of driving ‘Performance’ through efficient operations and dedicated service quality across all centers. “Our focus is to create space for just-in-time use. Co-working spaces are seeing huge demand. As a company, we are transforming underutilized real-estate assets and providing an affordable work environment for today’s entrepreneur,” Ramani told the Times of India.



Being a platform for knowledge-sharing and cross-pollination of ideas, Awfis encourages its community members to network, interact and share ideas at seminars and corporate events. Apart from leasing out their own workspaces, they are also aggregators of meeting rooms at prominent hotels like Hyatt, Trident, Lemon Tree, Sarovar, Marine Plaza, Beatles etc. Awfis has developed its own tailor-made mobile application that makes it possible for entrepreneurs and the Indian workforce to search and book available workspaces at Awfis. Third-party meeting rooms in hotels that Awfis is associated with can also be booked real-time via this app.

Currently, Awfis has its presence in Delhi NCR, Gurugram, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune. Its most recent foray has been into the Hyderabad market in April 2017, gradually emerging as India’s largest co-working player. The company plans to step up its presence in cities where it already has co-work spaces, and also expand to other cities across India by 2019. Awfis nurtures rapid expansion plans, aiming at opening more than 100 co-working spaces within the next couple of years, increasing its seat count from the current 7,500 to 35,000. Plans to upgrade its technology platform are also in the offing.

Maple Capital Advisors was the financial advisor for the joint collaboration between Awfis and The Three Sisters: Institutional Office, raising an initial investment of $11 million. The leading Menlo Park-based Private Equity firm, Sequoia Capital has invested $20 million in April 2017, which will be used by Awfis for their rapid expansion plans and ramping up its technology platform.