How this college dropout is aiming to make his startup the OYO of office rentals
For 27-year-old Gourab Paul, solving big problems was always a passion. That’s why he chose to work with several early-stage startups between 2012 and 2016, including adtech startup AdPushup, and self-drive car-rental startup Peersome. He eventually landed up at tech-focused venture capital firm Kalaari Capital.
Brought up in Siliguri, Gourab dropped out of college back in 2012. He says,
“I was a misfit in the college education system, hailing from a small isolated town in West Bengal and with almost no exposure to the real world. I had no knowledge on the possible career paths. And, later, I realised that the rat race made absolutely no sense to me.”
The problem they are solving
Over the past few years, there has been a surge in the co-working concept, with the likes of 91springboard, WeWork, Coworks, BHIVE, AltF Co-working, and many others offering fully furnished and serviced office spaces.
However, Gourab says that a customer looking for an office space ends up visiting multiple coworking operators and still finds that his or her requirements are not adequately matched. With multiple co-working spaces, it often becomes frustrating for a customer to go through available options, make site visits, compare, and finally find the best fit. Real estate aggregators like 99acres and Magicbricks have hundreds of listings on their websites run by different real estate agencies; this creates a monopoly and controls the pricing artificially.
“When you think of hotel aggregators, the brand that pops up to your mind is OYO. When you think about cabs, it’s Ola, but no brand comes to mind when you think of office renting. Our aim is to become a unified brand in the office rental space.”
The Hacker Street at present works with more than 500 office space operators in India, including major co-working brands. However, the startup does not share specific names.
Currently doing the match-making through manual backend operations, the founder says that the automation tech for an matchmaking engine is being built in-house and that they plan to introduce it with a new web app in a couple of months.
While most rental advisory firms and co-working spaces are looking at clients wishing to house thousands of employees, The Hacker Street is focusing on customers looking to house anywhere between one and 100 seats.
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