Companies today maintain a stable headquarters, but increasingly lean on flexible workspaces to support distributed teams, expand into new cities, and adapt quickly as workforce needs evolve. Rupesh Kumar, Chief Product & Technology Officer, WeWork India exclusively informs Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media & CXO Media that flexible workspaces have essentially turned real estate into something businesses can operate dynamically, rather than something they are locked into.
WeWork India has over the years diversified its portfolio. What are the product offerings currently in your portfolio?
When we opened our first building in 2017 in India, we started as a coworking space – an industry that was at a nascent stage. Today, that is just a part of who we are and what we offer to our 110K+ members. We have evolved into a full-stack workspace platform, and we are the leading flexible workspace operator that offers one of the most comprehensive range of products and services in the industry.
Whether you are a large enterprise or an early-stage startup, we build flexible workspace solutions around what members actually need – from custom-designed buildings to enterprise suites, managed offices, private offices, coworking spaces, and hybrid digital options.
Broadly, our offerings fall into these categories:
- Office Spaces: From ready-to-move-in private offices to spaces built entirely around the member’s brand.
- Private Offices: Fully-equipped, ready-to-move-in or customisable spaces for teams of every scale, industry, and stage
- Managed Offices: Offices that we source, design, build, and operate end-to-end for your business
- Coworking Spaces: Flexible access, whether a member needs it for an hour, a day, or a month.
- WeWork All Access: Monthly coworking membership giving access to our spaces across India and globally
- WeWork All Access Pay Per Use: Postpaid subscription model designed for hybrid teams
- On-demand Day Passes: Book a day pass at any of our centres, pay only for what you use
- WeWork Labs: Our investment and acceleration arm, built to help early-stage startups grow faster through subsidised workspaces, a curated founder community, and strategic investments.
- Virtual Office by WeWork: It gives businesses a premium address for GST and company registration, without needing physical space.
- WeWork Workplace: Our software platform that helps businesses optimise how they manage workspace and workforce, thus elevating the overall workforce experience.
We recently launched our new business vertical, Rivet, a design and build platform that delivers integrated, experience-led, customised workspaces tailored to the specific needs of enterprises and end users. It is a natural extension of everything we have learned building and operating workspaces at scale, now offered as a standalone capability for businesses that want that expertise applied to their own spaces.
At WeWork India, our portfolio is not about any one product on its own, it is how they work together. A startup might walk in needing a single day pass or a hot desk. As it grows, it can move into a private office, then a managed office, then eventually a fully custom-built campus designed through Rivet, all without ever having to leave the WeWork India ecosystem. That seamless movement across our full stack, as a business scales, is exactly the point. It means we are equipped to meet a company’s needs not just today, but at every stage of its growth journey. WeWork India has a solution built for exactly where businesses are, and where they are headed next.
How will you explain the dynamics of the WeWork India mobile app and how would you assess its acceptance?
The WeWork India app is built on a simple idea: it marries the digital world with the physical space. It acts as the single gateway for every interaction a member has with a WeWork building, the central touchpoint through which members access and manage their entire workplace experience.
Consider a typical day. You book what you need on the app – a desk, a day pass, a meeting room, an office, or amenities like a podcast room. You enter the building and your office space using the digital keycard on your phone, with no physical card or front-desk friction. You order food from the app and receive a notification when it is ready. You walk into a meeting room and get a seamless meeting experience with the app integrated with our meeting room technology. You print a document from the app and simply tap your phone on the printer to retrieve it. You invite guests through the app and are notified when they arrive. You find events happening in your building and register with a tap to engage with other members in the space.
And when you have a question, about the product, a requirement, an issue, your booking, invoices or payments – our AI bot resolves it, and where it can’t, it automatically creates a ticket on your behalf. The app is not a companion to the workspace; it is the operating layer of the workspace.
In terms of acceptance, we have seen strong and growing engagement from our member community. The app has crossed over 90K installs. A member rating of 4.8 places us at the top of the category for workspace apps globally, and booking volumes through the app continue to grow month on month. The app has become an integral part of the daily workplace experience, with members increasingly relying on it for both operational tasks and community engagement.
But the metric we value most is the engagement depth – active usage, feature adoption, repeat engagement, and member satisfaction. Every interaction that moves into the app makes the member experience faster and gives us better signals to serve members: which spaces they use, what they need next, and where friction exists.
That is also where we are headed. Building a community engagement layer to connect our 110K+ members across our buildings, expanding the range of services available through the app, and deepening our AI capabilities to make the app completely personalized, anticipating what members need rather than waiting to be asked. It reflects how we think about technology at WeWork India more broadly: not as a support function, but as core to delivering a flexible, premium workplace experience.
There has been a growing adoption of the hybrid working model, especially after Covid. How has this impacted the flexible workspace and WeWork India in general?
Hybrid work has fundamentally changed how enterprises think about office space. Before the pandemic, most companies relied on long-term fixed leases, fixed footprints, and workforce plans made years in advance. Today, that playbook doesn’t hold as businesses need far greater flexibility, and they need it built into how they think about real estate from the start.
What we are witnessing across our enterprise clients is a clear shift toward a “core-plus-flex” approach. Companies maintain a stable headquarters, but increasingly lean on flexible workspaces to support distributed teams, expand into new cities, and adapt quickly as workforce needs evolve, something that is only become more critical as AI reshapes business operations and the kind of talent companies need to hire. We recently published a report – AI and the Future of Flexible Workspaces, and one of the findings was that India’s flexible workspace stock has grown from 33 million sq. ft. in 2020 to 103 million sq. ft. today. That is not a post-pandemic bounce-back, it is a structural shift in how companies approach real estate, and one that is here to stay.
Hybrid work has also raised the bar for what employees expect from a workplace. When people can choose to work from home, the office has to earn its relevance. Our research shows 89% of enterprises now believe workspace quality matters more than it did two years ago, and 82% say quality plays a real role in attracting and retaining AI and tech talent. In other words, the office is not just real estate anymore, it is become part of an organisation’s talent strategy. At WeWork India, this has pushed us further into the role of a strategic workspace partner, not just providing space, but helping businesses build flexible, high-quality workplaces that support their business goals, especially in the AI era.
How will you describe the flexible workspace sector in India in 2026 both qualitatively and quantitatively?
India’s flexible workspace sector has reached an important inflection point. It is no longer seen as an alternative to traditional offices, it is become a core part of enterprise real estate and workplace strategy. Qualitatively, what stands out is who’s driving this demand. It is no longer just startups; large enterprises are now adopting flexible real estate strategies at scale. In FY26, our enterprise members contributed 77% of our core revenue which is a notable indicator of where the growth is coming from. We are also seeing a sharp rise in Managed Office requirements, as companies look for customised, scalable solutions that support long-term growth, a clear sign that flexible workspaces have moved from being a supplementary option to an integral part of corporate real estate portfolios.
The numbers reflect this momentum. In FY26, we recorded our highest-ever desk sales at nearly 48,000 desks, and expanded our committed portfolio to 11.6 million sq. ft., up 39% year-on-year. Our portfolio occupancy stood at 86.9%, with mature centres running even higher at 88.9%. We are continuing to sign and launch new centres across cities to meet growing demand from enterprises and GCCs, who along with tech companies, BFSI firms, and MNCs are increasingly choosing flexible workspaces to scale quickly across multiple markets. And what they are optimising for has changed.
Businesses today look beyond cost, prioritising high-quality workspaces, technology-enabled infrastructure, faster occupancy, and experiences that help them attract and retain top talent. Looking ahead, the rapid growth of AI and GCCs is only going to accelerate this. As India cements its position as a global hub for AI talent and digital innovation, the demand for premium, flexible workspaces will continue to stay strong, positioning this sector for sustained, long-term growth as a critical part of India’s future workplace ecosystem.
How has flexible workspace transformed the way businesses operate and how will you assess WeWork India’s role in this transformation?
Flexible workspaces have essentially turned real estate into something businesses can operate dynamically, rather than something they are locked into. That shift has been possible largely because of technology, data on how space is actually being used, digital access that lets people move between cities and centres without friction, and platforms that give businesses visibility and control over their workspace the same way they’d manage any other resource.
At WeWork India, technology is not a support function, but an integral part of the business that facilitates flexibility. For instance – WeWork Workplace, gives businesses real-time visibility into space utilisation and lets them make smarter decisions about their footprint instead of guessing. Underlying systems handle everything from access and bookings to space planning at scale, so we can operate centres with consistency while still tailoring each one to what a business actually needs.
A large portion of conventional office spaces is still catching up on the technology front, whereas WeWork India is at the forefront. Technology is central to how we approach both planning and execution at WeWork India. We have used technology to turn the workspace from something static to something businesses can manage seamlessly in a manner that is flexible, data-driven, and built to adapt as fast as they do. We continue to leverage data and digital infrastructure to monitor workspace performance, enabling ongoing optimisation in areas such as utilisation, energy efficiency, and user experience. This ensures that technology not only drives better execution, but also supports smarter, more responsive workplaces over time.
What is the total current capacity supported by WeWork India together and how much of it has grown inorganically?
WeWork India currently operates 76 centres across eight cities – New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune, with 8.6 million sq. ft. and an operational desk capacity of approximately 126.9K desks.
Our expansion has been guided by a disciplined, demand-led strategy focused on premium locations and long-term enterprise demand. While we continue to evaluate strategic opportunities that complement our portfolio, our focus has always been on building a resilient business with high-quality assets, operational excellence and a consistently premium member experience. We continue to sign and launch new centres across cities to cater to growing enterprise and GCC demand. We recently opened three new buildings – WeWork Worldmark 6 in New Delhi, WeWork Embassy Vertex & WeWork ETV Zinnia 8C in Bengaluru – driven by clear customer demand and long-term growth requirements.
With traditional workspace still largely prevalent in corporate India, how will AI impact the future of tech-led workspace in India?
Traditional workspaces still account for a significant portion of office space in corporate India, but AI is fundamentally changing how businesses think about real estate. The traditional model was built around predictable headcount, long planning cycles, and fixed office requirements. AI is making all three far more dynamic.
As organisations adopt AI, workforce planning is becoming less predictable and business needs are changing much faster. Our research with Redseer shows that 45% of enterprises believe AI has made workforce planning more challenging, while 75% now plan their real estate needs over three years or less. This makes flexible, technology-enabled workspaces a better fit than long-term, fixed office commitments. AI is also changing the way people work. Teams are becoming more collaborative, creating greater demand for meeting rooms, project spaces, and technology-enabled workplaces rather than rows of individual desks. Businesses are also looking for reliable digital infrastructure, 24/7 access, and the ability to scale quickly as teams grow or evolve.
AI is also changing how people actually work. Teams are more collaborative, which means more demand for meeting rooms and project spaces, and less for rows of individual desks. Businesses now expect reliable digital infrastructure, 24/7 access, and the ability to scale a space as fast as they scale a team. The demand signals are hard to ignore. AI hiring in India has grown six-fold since 2019, GCCs are expanding rapidly, and most enterprises plan to accelerate AI adoption over the next two years. We are already seeing this play out in our own leasing pipeline, with more enterprises choosing flexible workspace as a core part of their long-term real estate strategy, not a stopgap.
Which are the verticals where WeWork India is witnessing maximum traction today?
Technology continues to be a key sector, contributing nearly 29% of our core revenue in Q4 FY26, with healthy year-on-year growth. However, what’s notable is our diverse member mix. BFSI has emerged as one of our fastest-growing segments, contributing 16.9% of core revenue, while desk sales from the sector grew 176% YoY in FY26. We are also seeing strong momentum from Professional Services, Media, and Pharma, reflecting growing demand from enterprises across industries.
Another important trend is the rapid expansion of GCCs. At WeWork India, GCCs contribute 35–40% of our revenue, growing consistently over the last several quarters. Overall, the demand we are seeing today extends well beyond the technology sector. Enterprises across industries are looking for high-quality, flexible workspace solutions that allow them to scale quickly, support distributed teams, and provide an enhanced workplace experience. This broad-based demand gives us confidence in the long-term growth of the flexible workspace sector.
What are WeWork’s unique differentiators over other competitors in attracting premium clients?
Our biggest differentiator is that we have evolved beyond being a flexible workspace provider to becoming a full-stack workspace partner for enterprises. We have built a strong enterprise business. In Q4 FY26, 77% of our core revenue came from enterprise members. We also work with a large number of global organisations, with 65% of our core revenue coming from our global members. This reflects the trust leading enterprises place in us as they establish and expand their operations in India.
We offer much more than office space. Along with flexible workspaces, we provide a whole range of solutions which allows us to support members across every stage of their workspace journey through a single integrated platform. Another key differentiator is our ability to deliver highly customised workspaces. Our teams have built specialised environments including AI development centres, industrial automation labs, broadcast studios, command centres, and other mission-critical facilities. This demonstrates our ability to meet the complex requirements of enterprise customers across industries.
Combined with our nationwide footprint, operational expertise, and integrated service offering, we are well positioned to support businesses as they scale across India. As more enterprises look to consolidate their workplace needs with a single trusted partner, we believe these capabilities set WeWork India apart in the market.
