You have a client meeting or you want to show a product demo to a potential Venture Cap but you are running your business from home! What do you do in such a scenario? Calling the client home wouldnt be a good idea and you cant arrange for a office space for a short period… Here are some options!
Lot of people I know are running their business from Barista’s, Cafe Coffee Day and the likes of Coffee places which have mushroomed all over the country. Are the clients minding it? I dont think so…
PlugHR sets up & runs HR department for organizations. Its based out of Bombay and most of the meetings are conducted at Barista. All one needs is a Laptop, a Datacard and some good Coffee.
For a important client meeting when you need to impress the client go to a cofee shop of the nearest Five Star Hotel! Most of them would have WiFi connection but you will need to pay for it.
There are Coffee shops cropping up which offer free WiFi. You will need to just ask around for one in your city.
In Bombay there is Bagel Shop at Carter Road, Bandra Which provides free Wifi and at any given point of time you will find more people doing business then chilling. Another option is Coffee World (or somthing) again at carter road which has free WiFi.
You can lease an Virtual Office space at places like Regus (Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi and Pune) where you get services like Reception and concierge services, Administrative support, Telephone Answering, Meeting Rooms and more. The cost is not much and the facilities provided are professional. You can straight away print the address on your Business Cards and you are good to go.
The last option which some people/offices are offering is of Coworking. Frankly i had never heard about it till i read about it on Kiruba’s Blog and he is providing this at his office space.
What is Coworking? Typically work-at-home professionals or independent contractors or people who travel frequently end up working in relative isolation. Coworking is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space. You can read more about it here.
So if you know of any such places for people to conduct their business without really having to spend money, do comment about it.
Cheers!
12 responses so far ↓
1 sonal // Oct 22, 2008 at 3:05 pm
fascinating!
2 Arun // Oct 22, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Hey Kunal,
You reminded me of days when I just came back from US and we really did not have any office space. Me and my partner operated from CCD for 2 full months paying something like 90 rupees an hour…but it was worth it at that time. Having AC and nice place to work 🙂
3 Mitesh Ashar // Oct 22, 2008 at 11:28 pm
This concept intrigues me…
Co-working is something that intrigues me even more and voila I got an idea… I am blogging about it soon… 🙂
4 chhavi // Oct 23, 2008 at 4:02 pm
At the risk of losing my stomping grounds to the wifi brigade, Mumbai also has the Banyan Tree Cafe in Worli with not just free wifi but also plug points for your computer.
In Kolkata, there are three wifi enabled Aqua Javas but – be warned – no plug points so you can basically sit there only as long as your computer has juice.
5 vivek khandelwal // Oct 23, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I prefer barista’s over CCD’s ..lol.
never knew bout the free wifi thing …had heard rumours over the fact that its free ..but then now as i have the list..
the next time we meet ..we meet at Carter Road..
Nice post:D
6 punetech // Oct 24, 2008 at 8:24 pm
One startup in Pune wanted to show me a demo – and invited me to a conference room in Axis bank! Apparently they provide web-enabled meeting/conference rooms to their “valued” customers (defined as having 1L balance)
7 Dhawal // Oct 28, 2008 at 10:05 pm
This is very interesting, any coworking groups in Mumbai? I am running an internet startup and is looking for coworkers, I can be contacted at ds.maverick@gmail.com
8 Aarti Kandhari // Oct 29, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Hey Kunal
Interesting read. I would love to know more about co-working. As far as my experience with public places goes meeting up at CCD is just too noisy. I avoid that these days.
9 Shreekanth Pranjal // Nov 7, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Regus gives you the best option of vitual Office with the best address for you to operate from in best price. To know more contact me on +91 44 4221 8075 or mail me on shreekanth.pranjal@regus.com
10 Ashish // Nov 13, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Coworking as a concept might be very old, but as a term is due to effort of a folks at coworking.info . It has spread out rapidly in past 3 years . There is even a google group by the same name .
11 Shreekanth Pranjal // Feb 9, 2009 at 6:36 pm
The best solution for people running business from home as well as who keeps travelling around the world or in India, we at Regus provide the best solutions anywhere in the world. To know more feel free to contact me at shreekanth.pranjal@regus.com
12 srinivas vedula // Feb 16, 2009 at 11:00 pm
The concept of working from ready to use with all infra is catching up in this era of recession, We are now offering state of art ready to use instant offices, conference rooms at very attractive prices, the usp of our offices are unlimited connectivity broad band with supply of PC also. You can customise your office also either cabins or work stations and the rents are from very short term to medium and long term.Another advantage is we are prsent in 240 locations in India. For Details and attractive offers feel free to contact me on srinivas.k.vedula@relianceada.com
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