Cowrks plans to raise $350 mn for overseas expansion

Cowrks India Pvt. Ltd, a shared office space provider, is in talks to raise $350 million (Rs 2,427 crore) from external investors, its chief executive said.

Abhishek Goenka told the Mint newspaper that the company, which is backed by commercial real estate developer RMZ Corp, has given the mandate to investment bankers Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch for the fundraising round.

This would be the first round of external funding for the company, the report said.

“We are targeting both domestic and offshore investors, and it could even be a clutch of investors and not just a single one," said Goenka.

The co-working space provider runs 23 centres across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi and Gurugram, apart from smaller cities such as Pune, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh.

The two-year-old company plans to increase the number of centres to 75 by the end of the year and increase its member base from 23,000 to 75,000.

The company competes with well-funded players like SoftBank-backed WeWork, which has an India presence. Recently, SoftBank-backed hospitality chain OYO acquired Innov8 to add co-working space as a business vertical.

Another player in the segment is three-year-old Awfis, which was jointly incubated by Amit Ramani and The Three Sisters: Institutional office run by daughters of Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor. Awfis had raised $20 million in June 2018 from investors led by Sequoia Capital.