myHQ- for Excellent Work Experience at a Space near you

myHQ

Shubham Kumar

Oct 10, 2020 — 11 min read

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We know important work station spacing and culture are. With the young minds hustling all day to achieve organizational goals, it is imperative to provide them the right frame of mind with regards to the space and ambiance of the office. With the same insight and to provide top-notch work stations, Vinayak Agarwal and Utkarsh Kawatra launched myHQ in 2016.

myHQ was conceptualized with the idea of creating a chain of work-friendly spaces and providing young millennials, Startups, SMEs and Enterprises with excellent work experience. Keeping in mind the real estate space crunch in urban cities and realizing the importance of an all-encompassing ecosystem for better productivity, motivation and networks myHQ was envisioned by the founders.

myHQ- Company Highlights

Startup Name	myHQ
Headquarter	Delhi
Sector	Real-estate Tech
Founders	Vinayak Agarwal, Utkarsh Kawatra
Founded	2016
Parent Organization	Justwork Technologies Pvt Ltd
Website	myHQ.in

myHQ - About and How it Works
myHQ - Founders and Team
myHQ - Target Market Size
How was myHQ Started?
myHQ - Startup Challenges
myHQ - Business Model and Revenue Model
myHQ - User Acquisition
myHQ - Growth
myHQ - Funding and Investors
myHQ - Advisors and Mentors
myHQ - Future Plans
myHQ - FAQs

myHQ - About and How it Works

myHQ is building a chain of branded and standardized workspaces. It guarantees the users that all the office essentials such as high-speed Wi-Fi, plug points at every seat, discounted F&B, free printing, and stationery and access to all other office amenities at all workspaces and work cafes. It offers different workspace solutions over these network of spaces:

Flexi
The Flexi subscription is a unique visit based subscription model, where the user only has to pay for the days they use the space, without having to worry about monthly rentals or security deposits. The Flexi subscription plans offer users access to a rich variety of workspaces with lifetime validity and standardized workplace experience at just INR 200/day. Users can, for example, choose to work from a coworking space in Connaught Place one day and from a high-end work café in Gurgaon the next, without having to worry about monthly rentals and security deposits.

Team Flexi
The team Flexi plan is targeted towards the mobile sales and business development team that are constantly on the move. They need space for their meetings or between their meetings to sit and work for a few hours. The Team Flexi plan allows companies to easily manage their mobile team, gives them visibility of their work schedule and helps them eliminate the need for reimbursements / per-diems. Once the company subscribes to the myHQ Team Flexi, they give access to their employees through a dashboard. The employees can reserve and work from any myHQ space that is close to their home/client office. There are no monthly or fixed charges, like the Flexi the plan the company is only charged for the reservation they make.

Dedicated Desks
With the dedicated plan, users get a dedicated space reserved for them for a month. Users can choose to book just a desk, a private cabin or a customized private managed office designed according to your needs. Our representatives help the users choose from the best option depending on their requirements and arrange visits to these spaces. myHQ has the widest coverage in the market with 160+ workspaces across Delhi NCR and helps the user find the best space based on their needs. Once the users are satisfied, they can book the space online. It also offers the lowest price guarantee, where if they find a better price myHQ gives them an additional 10% discount.

myHQ - Founders and Team

Vinayak Agrawal and Utkarsh Kawatra are the Founders of myHQ

“Interestingly, we first met each other at a break-up party of one of our common friends during college. It was just a casual interaction, though it did lead us to work together in a college project and BloodConnect which is an NGO founded by Utkarsh Kawatra. We have been friends ever since. The bond grew in 2015 when we were both in Bangalore. Bangalore traffic and dinner outings gave us a lot of time to catch up and become good friends.” Said Vinayak Agrawal, Co-Founder & CTO, myHQ.

Over the last 2.5 years in myHQ, they have gotten to know each other even more. The journey from the highs to the lows, both personally and professionally - the founders practically live each other’s lives!

Vinayak Agrawal is the Co-founder and CTO at myHQ. At myHQ, he spearheads the product, technology, and marketing divisions. Before starting his journey with myHQ, Vinayak worked as a Quant and Algorithmic Trading Strategist at Goldman Sachs. At Goldman Sachs, Vinayak built pricing models and scalable trading platforms for the Asia Fixed Income trading desks. Vinayak holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. During his time at IIT, Vinayak worked on Machine Learning and Computer Vision research and was awarded the best undergraduate thesis in his department. Vinayak also holds two patents to his name.

Utkarsh Kawatra is the Co-founder and CEO at myHQ. He spearheads the Sales, Business Development and Operations divisions at myHQ. Before myHQ, Utkarsh co-founded BloodConnect (bloodconnect.org), India’s largest youth-run initiative in the field of blood donation. BloodConnect is present in 10+ cities, a team of 200+. He is currently on the Board of BloodConnect as an advisor. Utkarsh started his professional journey as an investment analyst with Helion Ventures, where he evaluated B2C startups for investments. Utkarsh has also worked at Opera Solutions where he was responsible for procurement, handling cost-cutting projects for clients across IT and telecom sectors. Utkarsh has graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, with a degree in Mathematics and Computing. At IIT, Utkarsh was actively involved in various extra-curricular activities. He has represented IIT Delhi in aquatics at inter-IIT sports meet and has led the social service wing (NSS) of the campus.

myHQ - Target Market Size

In India, this sector is a $20 Billion market. The coworking market size for SMEs and Startups is $4 billion (2 Million seats for SMEs/startups). The day time cafe users market is $16 billion large – this includes freelancers ($15Million), Masters / Ph.D. Students ($2.5Million), and corporate professionals/sales teams/business travelers ($6Million).

How was myHQ Started?

All of this started when the co-founders were looking to solve the commercial real estate leasing problem. They were exploring the area of setting up coworking spaces. One of their friends, who owned a lounge in Greater Kailash (Delhi), suggested they use his lounge as a day time co-working space. Though initially hesitant, the founder duo took it up and saw many people, joining and working from the space.

Within a month, they had the lounge filled without any marketing effort. They saw different types of users, right from a college student coming to study to a freelancer working on projects, from a 5-member start-up working out of the space regularly to a VC using it for meetings. Seeing the varied use cases, and getting more requests from other space owners to set this up, the founders realized that this was hitting a sweet spot of bringing efficiency and creating a lot of value for all involved stakeholders. Looking at the initial interest, they finally decided to go ahead with this. And that’s how myHQ was born.

myHQ Logo

Working on only one location initially for 3 months, they learned with time- about the expertise needed in this business. They had realized it is a lesser real estate and more about hospitality, streamlining operations with technology and building a community. Though the initial offering was targeted towards individuals, over the past couple of years, they have expanded their product offerings for Mobile Teams (sales & business development folks on the go), Start-ups, SMEs and enterprises looking for private or customized shared office spaces.

myHQ - Startup Challenges

Since Vinayak and Utkarsh did not own the space or have a person present at the spaces, controlling the work experience at these spaces imyHnitially was a challenge. Over the last couple of years, they have invested in building a strong technology infrastructure to get a real-time snapshot of the space – a centralized Wi-Fi management system, Payment system at spaces to redeem credits, inventory management, monitoring the spaces real-time (occupancy levels, Wi-Fi status, etc.). This has helped them keep their operations lean and at the same provide great work experience to the users.

myHQ - Business Model and Revenue Model

myHQ is a workspace solution provider – whether you are an individual or an early stage start-up or an enterprise, it offers products/services that meet the user’s requirements most precisely. One can book seats by the day, month or get an office space designed according to their needs.

myHQ offers both fixed workspace solutions for teams and mobility solutions for individuals and corporations to manage their mobile teams. It is more of a managed marketplace, and the revenue model is revenue sharing. It takes a percentage of the revenue that it helps the partner spaces generate.

myHQ - User Acquisition

Most of the initial users came from the co-founder’s network – friends who we invited to try the product/experience working out of a lounge and share their feedback. They would speak to people working from cafés, explaining them about myHQ and offering them free trials to myHQ spaces. Also, the founders hosted a lot of networking events at their spaces which helped them spread the word. Post the initial set of users, most of the user growth came from word of mouth and referrals. SEO and content marketing are other important channels of growth.

There’s also this marketing campaign that went viral. It so happened that the founders launched a Coworking In Delhi Metro Campaign on April Fool’s day which went viral! While they did expect the campaign to do well, they didn’t expect people would believe it to be true especially with the timing of the campaign. They even received a call from a journalist who wanted to go live with the story in the next 30 mins on national TV. “We still receive messages from people asking how the metro coworking is doing!” Added Vinayak Agarwal.

myHQ - Growth

Currently present at over 160 locations in Delhi NCR.
Maintaining an aARR of $3.5 Million
Has 12000 active members on myHQ.
Some notable clients include Etsy, Magic Bricks, OYO, Bharat Pe, Bulbul.

myHQ - Funding and Investors

myHQ has raised funding of $2.1 million till date.

Date	Stage	Amount	Investor
November 2019	Pre-series A	$1.5 Million	India Quotient, RB Investments, Suashish,LetsVenture
January 2018	Seed	$0.5 Million	Anupam Mittal (Lead, Founder People group, Shaadi.com), Sachin Bhatia (Truly Madly, Makemytrip), Gemba Capital, LetsVenture
June 2016	Angel	$100,000	Outbox Ventures, Friends and Family

myHQ - Advisors and Mentors

“We have been fortunate to have some great investors who actively mentor and advise us. Most of our investors are ex-entrepreneurs who have firsthand experience of building and scaling companies. We reach out to our investors for help, guidance, and advice.” Added Vinayak Agrawal.

myHQ - Future Plans

“We plan to grow 6-7x by the end of this year. We are planning to expand to Bangalore in the next couple of months.” Concluded Vinayak Agrawal.

myHQ - FAQs

What is myHQ?

myHQ is building a chain of branded and standardized workspaces. It guarantees the users that all the office essentials such as high-speed Wi-Fi, plug points at every seat, discounted F&B, free printing, and stationery and access to all other office amenities at all workspaces and work cafes.

Who are the Founders of myHQ?

Vinayak Agrawal and Utkarsh Kawatra are the Founders of myHQ

How much funding is raised by myHQ?

myHQ has raised funding of $2.1 million till date. Recent Funding in November 2019 was led by India Quotient, RB Investments, Suashish and LetsVenture for $1.5 Million as Pre series A

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