- Tell us something about yourself, your background
I am Aditya Verma, the co-founder and CEO of The Office Pass (TOP). I come with over 20 years of experience in conceptualizing, setting up, managing, and scaling online business across different domains. An engineer with a B.Tech degree in Electronics from Harcourt Butler Technological University (HBTU), Kanpur, I moved on to complete an MBA in Marketing from International Management Institute (IMI), Delhi. My areas of interest are E-commerce and Product Marketing, and I look after the growth, vision, and strategy for TOP business. Prior to starting TOP, I was co-founder and CEO of Makaan.com, one of the leading real-estate websites of India. It was later acquired by a NewsCorp investee company in 2015, making it a successful exit in Indian online real-estate space, a feat which is rare and remarkable.
- List your ventures with a brief explanation of each
- The Office Pass (TOP) is a Neighbourhood Coworking & Managed Office company that was set up in 2017, headquartered in New Delhi, India. Our aim is to connect companies and professionals with a warm, friendly, affordable, and hassle-free office space located near them. In addition to creating a high quality working space to meet the needs of organizations and professionals, relationships and connections are our key focus areas – this is what sets us apart from our competition.
The Office Pass (TOP) office in Gurgaon, India - Makaan.com was one of India’s leading real estates classified website launched in India in 2007. It went on to become the go-to site for people looking for buying and renting residential property in India. It had a unique rating system for brokers, which helped create better customer experience.
- How/Why did you start as an entrepreneur? What set you off?
Initially I wanted to start a managed serviced apartment business in India. It was the logical extension of what I had done at Makaan.com. While working on this concept in 2016, I came across a company called WeWork which was operating Coworking offices in US and was gaining popularity. Over the next 4-5 months, I studied both the models and concluded that the Coworking business was far more scalable and had large margins compared to the serviced apartment business.
I also concluded that unlike in developed countries where commuting to work was not a big hassle with multiple means of transport available; the situation in India was very different, so I customized the developed world’s Coworking model to make it suitable for the Indian scenario. This led to coining of the term Neighborhood Co-working which we are successfully pursuing now. The Office Pass (TOP) was borne out of this extensive study.
- Tell us a bit more about each of your ventures
The Office Pass (TOP) is focussed on providing flexible office spaces to small & mid-sized companies in the affordable price range of INR 6,000/- to INR 10,000/- per seat. TOP is the only company in the industry offering Neighbourhood Coworking which is different from conventional coworking as it caters to target audience nearby (< 5 kms). We offer flexible membership models to suit different work needs: “Regular Membership” for companies & professionals who come to office every day and “Flexi Membership” for less frequent users. We take care of all expenses associated with opening & operating an office like office furnishing & equipment, rental, electricity, WiFi, security, housekeeping, printing & scanning etc.
From a humble beginning in 2017-18 from a small 2800 SqFt office in Sohna Road, Gurgaon, India to currently operating 10 Flexible offices in Delhi NCR area (8 offices are in Gurgaon with 1 each in Noida and Delhi). TOP offices currently cater to over 140 companies. The business is growing at over 30% QoQ post covid second wave. Over the next 2 years, we plan to have 50 offices with a wider geographical footprint catering to over 1,000 companies.
TOP extensively uses technology to manage its operations – from digital invoicing & payment platform, marketing and member acquisition, everything is 100% digital. We are constantly looking at automation and digitization of our operations – eg, during the pandemic period in 2020-21, we enabled 360-degree virtual tours for all our offices so members could shortlist what suits them without the need of a physical visit. Currently in the pipeline are automated processes like online membership agreement signing, new customer funnel management, existing customer lifecycle management etc to make the business scalable and ready for growth.
TOP GOLD is the latest offering from the TOP portfolio. As several small to mid-sized companies associated with TOP have grown bigger and their needs have evolved, we plan to expand by launching a premium product christened TOP-GOLD. These offices will deliver a 5-star experience to these companies including larger desk sizes, high end furnishing, and less density. This new initiative will help TOP, not only to retain existing business but also to attract a new segment of companies.
- Website, Social Media and Video Links
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