Popular Trends with Respect to Co-working Office Space in Colombo
Coworking offices are emerging as a global trend in the world of business. Small-scale enterprises, start-ups, and freelancers are the ones preferring coworking offices over traditional workspaces and for the right reasons. Coworking offices are not only cost-efficient but also encourage entrepreneurship and foster freelancers and independent workers, who seek an agile environment to work. Besides these, they also offer flexibility, mobility, and opportunity to work with like-minded professionals.
Coworking spaces are rapidly evolving with the growth and expansion of businesses around the world. They have transformed from providing a simple hot desk to offering private workspace, meeting rooms, Wi-Fi services, and additional amenities like conference hall, business concierge services, and so on.
Many countries are embracing the concept of coworking spaces due to their unparalleled benefits. Coworking offices come with no strings attached, giving you the advantage of opting out whenever you want. They give you the ability to select the package that’s right for you, as per your business needs. Along with this, coworking offices are a hub of creativity and innovation and they play a key role in enhancing networking opportunities. Distinguished locations, parking facilities, and security are some of the other benefits coupled with coworking offices.
Home to different cultures, languages, and ethnicities, Sri-Lanka is also seeing a rise in the IT sector with several start-ups and businesses emerging in its metropolitan cities such as Colombo. Hence, the demand for office space for rent near the port city of Colombo is also on the rise. It has been a decade since the concept of coworking offices was discovered and in the past five years, coworking trends suggest that it will continue to grow. This is because firms seem to be closely following global trends in self-employment and entrepreneurship, free of administrative hassles.
As the number of remote workers and freelancers continue to rise, the shift towards coworking office spaces in Colombo will play a dominant role in how and where people work. Here are some popular trends with respect to the coworking industry in Colombo:
- Impact on commercial real estate: With the demand for industry services growing tremendously, coworking office spaces are having a major impact on the performance and utilization of commercial real estate. This is because coworking offices are increasingly upgrading their features by expanding their amenities.
- Coworking spaces are growing: Compared to coworking offices in 2011 that rarely exceeded 20,000 square feet, coworking offices today are no less than 100,000 square feet, targeting large companies. Small businesses, start-ups, and large enterprises are realizing the benefits of a coworking space and are thus, shifting their businesses to more affordable, flexible, and innovative workspaces.
- Emphasis on a niche: Nowadays more coworking offices are focusing on a niche market and are delivering rapid growth and profitability. Enhanced emphasis on a niche market helps in creating a community of like-minded professionals who support each other and can share valuable business practices.
- Coworking spaces are turning global: With leading firms expanding their operations beyond boundaries, coworking office spaces are going global to satisfy their business needs. For example, The Executive Centre, a provider of world-class coworking office spaces for rent in Colombo also offers high-end and modern coworking spaces in India in cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and so on.
- Increased migration of big corporations in coworking office spaces: In the present, some of the top business organizations like IBM, Microsoft, KPMG, and so on are rapidly exploring the possibility of moving their operations to coworking spaces. This is because positioning the teams in prestigious locations, equipped with technological resources helps them stay in tune with developing industry trends.
It is difficult to envision a future where coworking spaces become the norm for large businesses in Colombo. But as many small businesses continue to opt for these workspaces, the day is not far when big corporations too will begin to set up their operations in these flexible shared office spaces.
The way in which we work continues to evolve over time. Overall, we can say that coworking spaces are still a small segment in the world of business but this style of work is gradually gaining steam and popularity. Hence, it’ll be interesting to see how this industry shifts and revolutionizes the work culture in the coming days.
