Every business faces a major challenge in its initial stages, the challenge of operating from an affordable and viable working space. It is of paramount importance that the working environment for any kind or nature of business should facilitate necessities, amenities, and resources to ensure the smooth flowing of the operations.
The Office Pass (TOP) founded by Aditya Verma is striving to fill the gap of affordable and flexible working spaces in the country. As the Founder & CEO of the company, let’s read how he plans to achieve the same through his Candid Conversation with TBF.
1. Kindly brief us about the company – inception and the overall journey to date.
The Office Pass (TOP), part of TOP Technologies Private Limited, is a Neighborhood Coworking (NCW) company that provides high quality office spaces to professionals and micro, small & medium size businesses. TOP offices are warm, friendly, ready to use & economical.
In developing countries like India, people waste significant time, effort and money just commuting to work. In large cities this can be over 2-3 hours each day. Developing nations can ill afford this wastage. This time can be effectively utilized to grow the business and improve productivity – only if someone solves for commute.
TOP is the only company in the industry offering Neighborhood Coworking (NCW). NCW as the name suggests, is different from conventional coworking as it caters to target audience nearby (< 5 kms). The fundament premise is that people love to work in a high quality office facility close to their place of residence / business rather that commuting long distance. This makes NCW unique in its target segment, pricing, marketing, size of facility & unit economics etc.
Our first office opened in March 2017 in Gurgaon and we have not looked back since then. Currently 166 companies operate out of our 7 Coworking offices in Delhi NCR. 5 Coworking offices are in Gurgaon with one each in Noida and South Delhi.
2. Please tell us something about your Founder/CEO and his/her contribution towards the company and the industry.
Aditya, Founder & CEO has over 20 years of experience predominantly in consumer internet companies in leadership positions. Prior to founding The Office Pass, Aditya was the Co-founder & CEO of Makaan.com (one of India’s leading real estate websites) which was acquired by PropTiger (a NewsCorp investee company). This was among the very few successful exits in Indian online real estate space. He also held leadership roles in Monster.com and Rediff.com. He is a B.Tech Electronics from Harcourt Butler Technological University, Kanpur and an MBA Marketing from International Management Institute, Delhi.
Nikhil, Co-founder has over 14 years of rich experience in customer management & client servicing. Before founding The Office Pass, he was Senior Manager, Marketplace in Makaan.com where he headed content quality & audit, customer engagement, key account management & sellers training. Nikhil is a true team player and passionate about customer care.
Sachin, Co-founder has over 10 years of experience in Facility & Administration Management. Before founding The Office Pass, Sachin headed the administration function in Makaan.com where he managed offices & teams across 9 cities in India. Sachin holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Planning & Management (IIPM).
3. Your perspective about the Startup world.
India lacks infrastructure, talent pool and ease of finance that are critical for a thriving startup system. We have produced job seekers and not job creators. Like me, most students in Indian colleges aspire for a job more than building a company. There is little or no tangible support provided by government for innovation and a first generation entrepreneur has to do most of the heavy lifting by him / herself. These will have to change before a successful startup ecosystem takes shape in India.
4. What has been your game of plan to tackle the challenges in terms of changing trends, market players and innovations happening in the Startup industry?
The current spread of COVID 19 virus will have an unprecedented businesses impact across industries and geographies. This impact is likely to be more severe compared to the DotCom debacle of 2000, the Q3 2008 Lehman Brothers crisis or the Demonetization in India earlier in November 2016. All businesses will be hit without exception.
The decisions taken by the management of companies during this period coupled with their previous experience in navigating through above stated uncertain periods shall define the extent of damage and their speed of recovery. Having successfully navigated the previous few shocks, I feel in control & at ease with the current situation.
5. What is the USP of your business? Key features and highlights.
The main differentiations for our business are three –
- Neighbourhood Co-working (NCW) office is a key differentiator for business. Company has tasted initial success & believes there is merit in scaling further. Post COVID 19 companies & their employees will not like to travel long distance in public transport. Our NCW model will gain further traction as our members will be able to work from a TOP Coworking office located close to their place of residence.
- TOP’s Capital Light Model: TOP was conceptualized as a capital light business right at the time of its inception. From our business presentations 3 years back – till today we have highlighted capital light model as our key differentiation. This meant that most of CAPEX associated with scaling the Coworking business will not be done by TOP – but by our partners like Property owners, Real estate investors or financiers. This model is extremely hard to execute – as we have to convince others to take financial risk on our behalf. However, it significantly reduces TOP’s risk – in the event of any adverse situation (like the current COVID 19 pandemic). Over the past 3 years, while other Coworking players were expanding using their precious equity capital on office furnishing cost (approx INR 1600-2000/- psf), paying 3-6 months of security deposits and acquiring customers by using expensive filed sales staff; we got all this done thru our partners in a fraction of the cost. This will keep us going even in the current COVID 19 scenario.
- Unit level profitability: TOP strives for profitability at unit level, meaning we run individual Coworking office as a separate P&L and effort is made to turn each office profitable in under 7-8 months. This strategy has worked well for us – TOP business was able to achieve overall operational break in OND 2019 quarter. It also returned positive EBDITA in Dec 2019 & Jan 2020. This is extremely rare for an Indian startup and puts us in a unique situation when compared to other Coworking providers who continue to lose BIG money with no visibility of turning profitable in medium run.
6. Kindly share us with your Vision and Mission of your organization.
Our vision is to have multiple offices spread across the city – so one can find the closest TOP office within 5 kms. You can think of us as a convenient store for Coworking (like 7-11) versus a super store (like WalMart).
How TOP expands its Neighborhood Coworking operations in any city 
7. Enlighten us about any new advancements and technologies that have had a huge impact on the Startup industry.
TOP extensively uses technology to manage its operations. Currently, we have an automated online invoice generation platform, an online payment collection, member acquisition is only thru digital marketing, office supervision & customer connect are near 100% digital. That’s the reason we are able to manage over 166 companies across 7 offices with a small head count of 13 employees (including founder & co-founders). We further plan to automate processes like membership agreement signing, new customer funnel management, existing customer lifecycle management etc to make the business scalable and ready for the growth period.
