Dheeraj Jain, the angel investor who lead the first round of investment for Qdesq reminisced his experience with the startup, witnessing it’s massive growth. What started out as notes jotted down on a napkin has grown into an aggregator with 4,500+ centers across 100 cities, serves 10,000+ corporates, and facilitates 65,000+ desk bookings annually.

With additional investment from JLL, this investor was able to exit with a 6x return on his investment – great to see positive exits for backers of coworking-related businesses.

Debasish Mahapatra dives into the rise of coworking aggregators in India. While many of the listed platforms have been discussed in previous newsletters, it is interesting to see that ANAROCK running two platforms, myHQ and the local version of Upflex.

Also listed are local industry leaders CoFynd, Qdesq, GoFloaters and new player Desklinq.

Ofis Square has announced they have signed Shraddha Kapoor, the 2nd most followed Indian influencer on Instagram, to be the face of their brand.

While we have seen experimentation with (micro)influencers by aggregators in the past, this may very well be the very first use of a mainstream influencer/celebrity to promote and market a flexible workspace brand. Will Shraddha go as viral as Nicole Kidman did for her AMC promo? We’ll have to wait and see.

Paras Arora from Qdesq shares 4 predictions for flex space in 2023. In short they are: further expansion of operators, changing demands, rising flex pricing, and the impact of a recession.

Paras Arora shares that Qdesq have spun out Qudify to provide a "digital SaaS solution to enterprises and occupiers to optimise usage of workspace inventory and visitor check ins". This follows the trend we’re seeing from firms like officernd, Liquidspace, Kettle and recently Microsoft.