“Workplaces are becoming location agnostic,” says Santosh Martin, Chief revenue officer of WeWork India, a chain of coworking spaces that has 800 locations across the world, including 36 in India.
An office is no longer synonymous with its location or sprawling premises. As even mainstream tech and management companies rethink the way they work, there is now an idea that the small-town professional with big dreams might not need to relocate to a metro city — especially with a global health crisis yet to fully peter out — for the sake of a job alone.
Access to better technology at affordable prices and reverse migration (people returning to their home towns since the pandemic) has added to the demand. “Many employees returning to small towns still want an office space to work remotely,” says Vigneshwaran Pitchai, co-founder of Quartr Design, adding that he moved from Chennai to Coimbatore during the pandemic and operates out of a co-working space in the city.
