The world has seen ‘work from office and home’ in the past few years. After the onslaught of Covid and the mankind recovering from it, ‘work from home’ is also slowly going back to office spaces.
Kishore G Nair, Athul N, Indrajith NS
What if there is a new revolutionary concept that redefines working spaces – ‘working spaces that move around’ or those spaces around various cities with professional ambience that you can make your working space by offering a minimum hourly amount. The mobility of you is not tampered and the ‘office atmosphere’ is not hampered either. Meet the state of the art fLXii which is reimagining and redefining work as we know it, in a flexible way.
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The journey of building Flxii has had of a lot of ups & downs and a few pivots says the CEO Kishore G Nair. He recollects the journey – ‘After a 2-year stint with TCS I had worked on another office-space sharing platform Incoff Workspace Solutions from 2019. I met Athul while working with Incoff. Indrajith was my classmate from BTech who had done a few contract jobs and had also worked in real estate.’
The trio conceived the idea that is inspiring many such corporates for a new work culture now. With the onslaught of Covid, the workspace model implemented by organizations have evolved rapidly and they have adapted to a more flexible and hybrid way. Though the road ahead is one everyone is trying to figure out, all of us can agree that flexible working is an integral part of workspace offerings. Flexible and remote working is a core feature seen in offer letters today. This motivated them to come together and brainstorm and that's how they put together the core idea of Flxii.
Through Flxii, they are building an ‘On Demand Workspace Access Platform’ that enables individuals and teams to book workspaces and meeting rooms across coworking spaces and business centers. Now the famed start up have more than 100 centers around 40+ locations across India.
The Voyage into Entrepreneurship
Kishore says “Having gained work experience in multiple job titles like property consultant, delivery person, etc., I often found working 9 to 5 jobs tedious and exhausting. As I was unsatisfied with my corporate job experiences, I opted to become an entrepreneur, and took the reins of my career into my own hands. As an entrepreneur, I had more opportunities to develop and grow professionally as compared to my corporate jobs, and therefore proved more beneficial to me in the long run.”
Products fLXii is envisioning
The core product being built is the workspace booking platform. The customer demographic includes freelancers, startups, SMEs and corporate employees looking for a ‘Near Work’ solution with the least overheads. Through the platform individuals and teams can book seats, cabins, and meeting rooms across coworking spaces on an hourly and daily basis.
Customers can purchase credits and plans to access the spaces and plan their utilization as well. A new vision of researching the possibility of a recommendation engine to improve customer experience is also being considered. They also offer property consultancy and real estate advisory services to startups and corporates across India and clientele includes the likes of OLA, Cars24, etc.
Relevance of fLXii in Digital Age – Coworking 2.0
The physical workspace has been evolving and adopting newer models with WFH and remote working and coworking has played a central role in all this in the last decade. Covid accelerated the adoption of coworking by companies more than ever. Also, with WFH and remote working practices becoming the new norm, collaboration platforms also have newfound relevance. Coworking evolved into what could be called Coworking 2.0.
Customers are expecting spaces that provide flexibility, convenience, and collaborative opportunities as well. A platform that connects teams and locations could establish all these criteria.
USP
Flxii.work offers people the convenience of booking workspaces on the go. People can book seats or meeting rooms in coworking spaces for themselves or their teammates across locations. Booking confirmation and check-ins are done through QR-code embedded tickets which provides easy access to spaces. Teams can identify workspace usage across locations and reduce physical workspace leases. This aids in boosting productivity. Coworking spaces can manage their inventory and track utilization as well.
The team says they are also working on a recommendation engine that identifies booking patterns and customer preferences to suggest the ideal workspace for individuals.
Future
Flxii is aiming to make workspace access and management flexible and fluid. Now, workspace has become a choice than a mandate and people are adapting to this. The futuristic vision of flexible working is still in the infancy stage and will shape up in the coming years.
The first launch of fLXii is to be on Android and then we will subsequently roll out iOS and web versions. With the platform they want to make short term leasing of workspaces hassle-free. In future they are looking to dive deeper into workspace access and workspace and asset management as well.