Chennai plays home to several coworking spaces that have been designed to meet varied demands. According to JLL research firm data, the city has more than 17.9 lakh square feet of coworking stock with 22,579 seats being used out of the total availability of 33,383 seats. But remember that not all spaces can offer what you’re looking for. Here are five key tips to help you choose the right one based on your business, budget, needs, and preferences from multiple coworking spaces in Chennai.
- Prime location with easy accessibility
Working from an office space located in the heart of the city or in the central business district would make commuting easier for you and your team and even your visitors. It would also give your business a certain degree of credibility and help impress potential business partners, clients, and employees. This makes it important to choose a Chennai coworking space that’s favorably located and easily accessible via both private and public transport modes like the car, auto, bus, train, and metro.
- Check the cost
To stay within your budget, you should choose a coworking office that basic IT and business amenities. These would usually include coffee/tea/water, printing, meeting/conference rooms, workshop/mentoring/events, etc. along with some additional services that you may require like accounts and tax consultation, legal assistance, interior design, and IT support at a low or no cost at all. Make sure to ask which of these amenities are included in your membership fee and which are chargeable as add-ons to ensure you don’t go beyond your budget.
- Flexibility and scalability
Your chosen coworking space in Chennai should have user-friendly, flexible plans and policies, and allow adequate space to scale up your team or business as they grow over time. So, you should check how easy or difficult it is to upgrade your seating plan, change your membership, and find additional space to accommodate newer team members. It would also be prudent to ask about the procedure and ease of downgrading your plan, should you need to. A flexible and easily scalable office environment would pave the way for following your professional and collaborative pursuits seamlessly. Additionally, it would let you make the most of your investment in the shared office space.
- Choose a fitting community
Working in a coworking space means working closely with people from diverse backgrounds having different skills. Be it seeking advice from community influencers and leaders, interacting with coworkers to share ideas and seek feedback, collaborating, networking, or learning from workshops, mentoring sessions, and meetups, you’ll get to enjoy a vibrant working environment. Apart from keeping you away from loneliness and monotony prevalent in traditional offices, a shared office can help you learn and grow provided you choose the right community.
- Shop around
Some Chennai coworking spaces will let you use their day passes or even try their amenities for a week before you commit. You should short-list a few shared offices and perform your regular tasks for a few days to feel the prevalent vibe, how comfortable it is to work there and understand the community better. Based on these experiences, you can make a final choice.
Coworking spaces are often called the workspace of the future. Since they’re going to stay and expand their footprints in the market, it pays to choose your Chennai coworking space cautiously using the tips shared above.
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