Co-working firm Awfis opens its largest centre in Bengaluru; Hopscotch strengthens top deck

Coworking space provider Awfis Space Solutions Pvt. Ltd has opened its largest centre in Bengaluru, its 11th facility in the city, The Economic Times said. The Delhi-headquartered company has 20 centres in Southern India, with an overall capacity of 10,000 seats. 

The current facility in Bengaluru, spread over 63,000 square feet, can house 1,050 workstations and claims 80% occupancy already from corporates and startups including Reliance Communications, Frontizo Business Services and Equal Experts. 

Awfis, backed by Sequoia Capital and Temasek, raised $20 million in a Series C round in July 2018. It counts among its top markets Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region), Mumbai and Bengaluru. In an interview with TechCircle in August 2018, Amit Ramani, founder and chief executive of Awfis, said that the company was looking to add 1.2-1.3 million square feet to its existing capacity of 1.5 million square feet.

Awfis competes with the likes of CoWrks; Innov8, which was acquired by OYO in March 2019 to launch its co-working platform; and SoftBank-backed WeWork. 

Hopscotch

Kid products e-commerce platform Hopscotch has made two senior appointments for its Bengaluru operations: Somu Vadali will lead data and product functions teams as chief product officer and Vivek Pawar will join as senior director of programmes and growth. 

The development was reported by The Economic Times, which said that Bengaluru was among the top three markets for the Mumbai-headquartered Hopscotch.

Vadali was chief digital and data products officer with Future Group before moving to Hopscotch. Pawar was previously with flash-sale based fashion curation platform StyleTag.

Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin-backed Hopscotch has been scouting for funds, according to multiple reports. The company last raised an equity round in 2016. It competes with SoftBank-backed baby and mother products e-commerce platform FirstCry. Hopscotch was founded in 2012 by Rahul Anand, former director at Diapers.com in the US, an Amazon-acquired company which was shut down in 2017.