Search Workplace - India's Exclusive Commercial Real Estate Platform

What is Search Workplace?

We’re a start-up that aims to help start-ups, businesses, small and large companies – find the perfect workspaces by running simple searches on our platform, as opposed to running circles around the city from place to place in the find for one. In technical terms - we’re a fresh commercial real-estate listing platform, yet calling ourselves Search Commercial Real-Estate or Search Offices didn’t feel commercially viable - somehow, and saying Workplace feels so much fresher. Say it with us – Search Workplace.

Why Search Workplace and not Find Workplace?

We believe that the best way for us to help users find their ideal workplace is not by presuming that they will when they visit Search Workplace, rather by increasingly enhancing the quality of the Search each day. In a world where the number of new business ideas is multiplying by the day, our objective is to ensure that the search for a workplace will be easy, adaptable and quick when those ideas decide to set up an office.

How Search Workplace found Inspiration

Being veterans in running around with brokers for weeks to find the right workplace, till the excitement of starting up is nearly overcome by exhaustion, we’ve first-hand experienced the need for an online platform like Search Workplace. We also realized that while there were many online platforms that listed commercial real-estate, there was a need to make a platform that was monetarily and functionally easy on commercial property owners or brokers. Our aim was/is to become a platform that was really user-friendly not just for buyers or renters, but more importantly for those listing properties – to encourage better detailing and quality of properties listed. 

---

WFI: Workplace Friendly Index

What the WFI are we talking about?

Since advertising dictates that we repeat how much we’re all about enhancing the search for a workplace, one of the unique ways in which we enhance our search is our “Workplace Friendly Index (WFI)”. We employ a complex algorithm to find a workplace’s nearest – travel, health, food, banking – conveniences on the map, assigning the workplace a rating accordingly. We believe that an ideal workplace is not just one that’s amazing from the inside, but also one that’s ideally situated. Picking a workplace by viewing its WFI score could tell you how easy it will be for you to be to work on time, enjoy great food, find a hospital in case you get food poisoning, or how least painful it is to find an ATM.

Why search workplaces on Search Workplace?

1. We’re an exclusive commercial real-estate platform: This is to ensure a clutter free and focused community, where commercial real estate owners and brokers can meet their specific target audience and vice versa.

2. You can list with us for free: This is purely to encourage better and genuine involvement from property listers on our portal, to work with us as creative partners in order list detailed and visually appealing properties. We strongly believe that the quality of individuals listing properties with us is imperative, as this will in turn ensure a better experience for property seekers. Listing a property with us is easy and user-friendly, but we take our time and research before approving a property to be listed.

3. Co-Working Spaces and Alternative Workspaces: We realized that with the continued growth in the number of startups in India, most of which start on tight budgets – the demand for alternative workspaces is ever increasing. That is where our Sharing Workplaces concept comes in – i.e. we’re strongly looking to list and promote the co-working space culture on our platform. It has already become a popular inexpensive alternative to renting or buying a workplace while providing business with great opportunities to casually partner and share resources in order to mutually grow. Moreover, with Virtual Workplaces we hope to provide workspaces to be rented only as per requirement, on a pay as you go basis - for freelancers or home-based companies that occasionally need an office space to have a meeting, conference calls or provide clients with an office address.

On Our Own For Now (Challenges & Role Play)

Ours is a bootstrapped venture. So, like other bootstrapped companies, we were also no excuse to facing several hurdles and challenges. Managing time after our day jobs or freelance projects in order to self-fund the company, while devoting time to Search Workplace, has been challenging but a feat worth accomplishing. There was a time when we were doing all three at the same time, i.e. the day job to support oneself and family, developing Search Workplace and freelancing for the extra money required for Search Workplace.

Strenuous times! But an important phase that proved true the cliché that - if you are really committed to achieving something, no bounds can tie or limit you. Did the challenges ever threaten to derail us from our vision? Looking back, we can gladly say - definitely not. Our dedication towards bringing an idea to life which could bring value and be of great use for others has kept us together.

Another thing that has been challenging at the same time exciting is - having to initially play multiple roles. Bootstrapping our project made us managers, designers, developers, tele-callers, customer support, etc. and every other new circumstance that forced us to instantly learn and take up new roles. We have become pretty much everything a company requires to function smoothly and we’re happy we got to play all these parts, so now when we hire – we have a hands-on understanding of the jobs we hire for. 

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (Overcoming Challenges)

Talking about managing hurdles, the main thing we would say has been a constant passionate self-assurance in the idea that “this thing is going to work.” The other key thing was time management. Initially, we were focused on completing one task at a time but soon realized allotting slots to tasks and doing a little towards various things would keep us progressing in various fronts. The other important challenge evader we would say was teamwork. Teamwork is always the key to success, no matter wherever it is applied. Keeping personal benefits aside and working together as a team lets you achieve the big thing.

---

Search Workplace Core Members (from left to right): Rajat Bagree, Sandesh Subedi, Piyush Verma, Amey Patil

Big Thanks to the Team

Search Workplace is where it is today because of a bunch of passionate, hardworking and dedicated people all working in harmony towards materializing a common goal. So, nothing gets completed without thanking and saluting the team. In the beginning for about 3-4 months, it was just the three founding members Rajat Bagree (Chief Executive Officer), Sandesh Subedi (Chief Operations Officer) and Piyush Verma (Chief Marketing Officer). Then with due course of time 3 more people came aboard - Amey Patil stepped in as Chief of Design handling the design and User Experience of the website and social media. So Kudos to him for all our clean visually appealing website and social media posts that you’ll find. Then joined Saad Merchant and Ahmad Naik - Content Creators and Idea guys – that helped us develop our brand’s tonality and gave us inputs on developing our idea. A big thanks and sincere gratitude with open hearts goes from our side to these people who worked with full enthusiasm to make our workplace come alive.

By, speaking of workplaces – we’d like to ask you to guess which of the four workplace categories do we as Search Workplace work from - Buying, Renting, Sharing, Or Virtually Renting?