Sparsh Khandelwal is the Founder and CEO of Stylework, a co-working aggregator that provides a distinct solution to problems with workspaces. They assist businesses by resolving issues with the workspace, cutting costs, and coming up with novel solutions. Since 2017, it has been five years of their operations, and they continue to revolutionize the way people work today.
In an interview with Entrepreneurs Today, Sparsh Khandelwal explains, “It’s a SaaS platform plus a marketplace, where we are focused towards the B2B segment of the market. So what we do is that we aggregate multiple co-working spaces and offices around the country over one platform, bring it to our supply network, and we aggregate it on the B2B SaaS platform and offer this platform to the corporates.” However, the services offered are not limited to this.
What are some other services offered at Stylework?
Stylework provides a wide range of services related to co-working spaces. They are an aggregation co-working company that uses technology to develop scalable solutions all under one roof. With the help of Stylework’s newly designed Corporate Product Suite, businesses can easily establish, book, allocate, and track different types of flexible memberships.
Stylework strives to add flexibility to the coworking ecosystem with the use of hybrid long-term memberships, walk-to-work driven multilocational memberships and custom hub and spoke memberships. The hybrid memberships are available in committed or pay-per-use models. They provide adaptable managed offices and co-working spaces with their plug-and-play setup to various companies across various domains and sizes as per their needs. Additionally, they assist in offering warehouses, virtual offices, and custom workspaces in line with the needs. With minimum lock-in or committed liabilities for months or years, their product enables thorough legal checks to hassle-free departures anytime.
What has Sparsh’s journey been like till now?
Sparsh set out on his entrepreneurial journey at a very young age. Being a computer science graduate at the age of 20, he got into his first venture which was named Cubes at the age of 19. With this venture, he dabbled into modular space architecture.
After earning a higher education and obtaining extensive experience as the founder and lead executive of his own business, “Cubes,” he found a huge market gap and demand for coworking spaces among people and businesses seeking rapid expansion. Thus, Stylework is the outcome of interactions with thousands of people who were searching for a co-working space for both their personal and professional needs, as well as market expectations.
“I wanted to build a product that could impact the shared economic side.”
Sparsh further explains the idea behind coworking aggregation and his desire to build something around the idea that fosters the concept of shared space. Soon after, he had the idea of bringing all co-working spaces and communities under one single platform via an aggregation platform in order to evolve coworking as software.
“Through this, multiple collaborations could be automated, and multiple channels could be formed that could give real power to the shared economy.”
Was it a smooth ride or did he encounter any challenges along the way?
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain
These are the words Sparsh has always lived by. However, since Sparsh didn’t come from a family with a business background, starting out his entrepreneurial journey was quite challenging. Sparsh shares that initially, it was quite daunting to bootstrap it all on his own. Even though he reveals that only some of his family members and father were supportive of his venture, he could not take any financial help from them as he and his father wanted him to make it on his own. When times were difficult, his family encouraged him to raise external funding and convince investors in order for him to learn.
Apart from the initial struggle, the time during which the pandemic struck made things quite difficult for Sparsh and the company. In the first six months of the pandemic, they were on the verge of closing down. However, they were able to pivot their business model in time.
“Initially we were dealing on the B2C front, but later we realized that now after COVID, there is an opportunity where companies would be looking for much more flexible spaces. So, we built a B2B SaaS platform quickly and survived through contingent planning.”
However, they kept moving forward and around the same time they got accredited with the Newchip accelerator from Texas, USA at 95% scholarship. They were also the only company in India to raise an equity funding round. He says, “there was a pre-series round of around $5 million valuation during wave one and wave two of COVID.”
What are some of his takeaways from the twenties?
Sparsh shares that in his opinion “the 20s is the most beautiful time period of your life, where you have the maximum energy, freedom, risk-taking capabilities, and the most versatility.” He adds that if you start early, by the time you reach your late 20s you’ll be at a point where you will create an impact.
Another thing he learned is to be more aligned with spirituality from a young age. He asserts that the sooner you engage in spirituality in its true sense, the sooner you’ll be able to manifest things and embark on endeavours that are more visionary than those of most people. He believes that if you begin doing it in your early 20s and practice, you can master it by the time you are in your late 20s or early 30s and be able to generate enormous wealth, remarkable impact, and a greater product.
What holds in the future and where does Sparsh see himself seven years down the line?
Stylework is a proud coworking aggregator today, listing more than 2000 spaces across 100+ cities in India. In this era of flexible and hybrid work arrangements, Stylework is keeping up with the shifting business trends. They intend to expand this business to international markets soon. Stylework is anticipating passing the unicorn milestone in the following 2–3 years and then raising an IPO in the following 5 years. The goal is to create a team of more than 10,000 working professionals and a top-notch product to make coworking simple and accessible worldwide.
