JLL Spark Invests in Qdesq, India’s Leading Digital Broking & Co-Working Technology Platform
JLL
Spark has invested an undisclosed amount in the flexible workspace
aggregator to tap into the burgeoning co-working market in the country
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This marks the f irst India-focused investment by the proptech focused fund
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Qdesq transacts one co-working seat every 20 minutes and is one of the fastest growing Proptech companies in India
Silicon Valley-based venture capital arm of JLL, JLL Spark, has invested an undisclosed amount in India’s largest
flex-space technology platform,
Qdesq. Through this investment, the proptech focused fund has
marked its first India focused investment, it said in a statement today.
Founded
in 2015 by Paras Arora and Lavesh Bhandari, Qdesq is a digital platform
that allows companies to transact flexible workspaces, managed
workplaces, virtual offices
and individual offices. The company lists India’s largest inventory of
available flex spaces in near real t ime and currently transacts one
desk every 20 minutes on behalf of corporates looking to avoid locking
themselves into long term leases.
At
present, Qdesq has approximately 2,200 centres, lists over 500,000
desks in near real time, covering the top 35 Indian cities and has
rapidly emerged as a dominant distribution channel
for co-working operators like WeWork, 91Springboard, AWFIS, Regus,
Smartworks, Innov8 and Oyo.
With
this investment, the company plans to invest heavily into the analytics
capabilities of its technology platform to allow enterprises to better
self-solution their futur
e real estate footprint and to allow commercial asset owners to create
viable co-working and flex spaces within commercial complexes.
“The
investment in Qdesq taps into the growth opportunity that the flexible
workspace segment offers. JLL’s strong corporate relationships across
the globe, combined
with Qdesq’s technology platform and preferred partnerships with flex
space operators, will help us provide a more comprehensive solution to
our clients across 35 cities in India,” said
Ramesh Nair, CEO & Country Head – India, JLL.
Demand
from corporates, startups and entrepreneurs in India has resulted in a
huge jump in the co-working share in total office leasing. According to a
JLL study, the share of co-working
office leasing has risen to 15 percent in the first six months (January
to June) of 2019 from the 8 percent level seen in 2018. The segment has
absorbed 10.1 mn square feet of cumulative space since 2017 to the
first half of 2019, according to the findings.
“Qdesq
sits at the cusp of one of the largest disruptions in commercial real
estate. Companies are no longer interested in inefficient leases with
long lock-ins. Businesses
are increasingly looking for the flexibility to easily expand or
contract their footprint. With their comprehensive inventory of real
time availability of managed spaces, Qdesq is able to dramatically
reduce the lead-time to occupancy for companies,” said
Anuj Nangpal, Asia Pacific Lead, JLL Spark.
As
per JLL estimates, currently there are approximately 325 to 330
flexible workspace operators in the top seven cities in India. The study
finds that the average size of
transactions in the co-working segment increased from 37,000 square ft
in 2017 to 52,000 sq ft in 2018 and further to 97,000 sq ft in the first
half of 2019.
“The average time it takes to
close a fixed time lease today is anywhere between three and six months.
In comparison, Qdesq is able to close even large enterprise occupancy
requirements within days. Our transaction volumes
have been growing over 400 percent year-on-year and, with our shared
vision with JLL, the opportunity is to scale the platform across Asia,”
said
Paras Arora, Co-founder of Qdesq. The company recently launched in the Philippines and plans to be present in most of Asia’s gateway cities in the near term.
Qdesq
has solutioned real estate occupancy requirements for a wide variety of
clients ranging from super high growth te chnology companies like
Zomato, Phonepe and Zerodha
to more established corporates like Bank of Baroda, Nagarro and
Hyundai. India is one of the largest potential markets for co-working
spaces in Asia, second only to China.
NA Shah Associates and Fortitude Law were advisors to the transaction.
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