Awesome CoWorking Spaces - 91springboard

We are starting this new series to feature awesome coworking spaces in India.

At eChai, we host engaging, insightful and content-driven Startup Networking Events in 15+ Cities in India. We frequently collaborate with various CoWorking Spaces in these cities to host our programs.

This series features in-depth interviews with the founders of awesome coworking spaces in India.

We're starting this series with 91springboard team.

91springboard is India’s largest, coolest, and happiest coworking community. It aims to inject the country’s robust business ecosystem with fully functional workspaces that reflect a unique collaborative spirit.

Having established its first dedicated co-working space in Delhi in 2012, 91springboard currently has 17 hubs spread across India’s premier cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai, New Delhi, Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Noida, and Goa.

The 91springboard community today consists of nearly 6,000 members and over 2,500 teams ranging from tech startups, business entrepreneurs, SMEs, freelance professionals, and international digital nomads.

With its objective of creating a work culture that shares and learns from each other, 91springboard promotes the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and skills by providing a collaborative environment that inspires both personal and professional growth.

What is the one sentence pitch of 91springboard?

To bring people together and foster meaningful communities

Tell us more about your team? And brief profiles of the founders. 

Currently, our internal team comprises of over 200 employees who strive to create the best community experience for our members.

Here’s a little about our founder profiles:-

Pranay Gupta, Anand Vemuri, Varun Chawla, Deepak Sharma, and Susan Lim are the 5 co-founders.

Pranay Gupta: Worked at Lehman Brothers and Nomura. Joint CEO of IIM-A’s Incubator (CIIE) Set up and expanded the IIMA incubator and led 40+ investments in startups across many domains. He played a critical role in IIMA incubator becoming the best in India.

Anand Vemuri: R&D Engineer at medical device startup, Caldera Medical, working on implantable devices for soft tissue repair. Handled end to end product development. Over six years of startup experience in Silicon Valley.

Varun Chawla: Worked in Goldman Sachs before turning into a serial entrepreneur.Founded and raised funds for five startups. Sold one of his travel startups, MyGuesthouse.com to MakeMyTrip.

Deepak Sharma: Progressed from management associate to Global Chairman, Citi Private Bank. Built new and successful businesses across US, Europe, Latin America, Middle East & Asia.

Susan Lim: A pioneer surgeon who successfully performed Singapore’s 1st liver transplant, robotic surgeon, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Fellow at the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Edinburgh, PhD in Transplantation Immunology, University of Cambridge, Co-chair of the Global Advisory Council at International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)

How did you come up with the idea of 91springboard?

The founding team of 91springboard got together with the simple idea of helping entrepreneurs. All the founders have felt the deep desire to build something bigger than themselves and experienced the highs and lows of walking this path in their own past and current ventures. 

While 91springboard began with a focus on startups, we have grown and expanded over the years to become a larger and more inclusive community of professionals from all walks of life, but the DNA remains the same. Being able to help make the path a little easier and a little less lonely is a source of immense pride for us.

What problem are you solving?

It makes sense economically for most individuals and organizations as coworking spaces bring in the efficiency of scale. 

At the core, we’re providing a hassle-free environment that allows our members to focus on their work and gives them access to the tools and resources they need to build their business.

 At a deeper level, we are creating a place where like-minded people can come together and benefit from each experience and expertise.

What is the revenue model of 91springboard?

91springboard works on a membership model. There are a series of plans and packages we offer that cater to the varied needs of working professionals across categories. We have everything from a day pass to part time plans to monthly memberships and interested parties can choose the one that suits them best.

What is your competitive advantage?

91springboard's core competencies lie in creating a coworking environment and culture that enables collaboration and growth for all parties involved. 91sprinboard has 2 main differentiators:

(1) Community: We function on a community based approach and believe that the spaces we are building thrive on a sense of community. The culture is what sets us apart from the other coworking spaces.

(2) Network: Being the largest coworking space provider, we have the biggest network across the country of various stakeholders from mentors to investors, service providers, partners and of course working professionals at various stages of their journey, creating the most value for anyone that joins the community.

How do you engage with your community (i.e. CoWorkers, Partners, Mentors, Employees etc.)?

Our focus goes far beyond providing seats and workspaces. Our core objective is to help businesses and startups grow. 

We create an environment where entrepreneurs and businesses get access to resources that they can leverage to expand and scale their business. 

For example, we organize events geared towards networking and gaining knowledge. One of our most popular events is Mentor hours, where we have a large list of industry experts who generously give their time to mentor entrepreneurs across verticals. 

We also organize meetups, workshops and seminars that address the variety of business needs of these entrepreneurs. Everything from workshops on advanced Powerpoint and Excel, to digital and content marketing, and even 3D printing and public speaking. 

We give people a place where there is continuous learning happening, that our members can tap into as and when needed. Quite a lot of these sessions are designed not just keeping the founders in mind but also how the people working in their companies can do better in their roles.

What are your growth plans for 91springboard?

We’re going to be heavily investing in our expansion plans with a focus on tier-1 cities as the bulk of demand at viable membership prices exists in these cities. We do intend to expand to a few tier 2 cities by 2020 as we anticipate spending power and demand will increase substantially between now and 2020. 

You can ask any questions to 91springboard team in the comments section.
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