WORKAFELLA IN ASSOCIATION WITH TOYOTA MOBILITY FOUNDATION AND DELOITTE FUTURE OF MOBLITY SOLTUION CENTRE HOSTS CATCH 2020

Chennai, February 21, 2020: Workafella, a young vibrant arena for doers and thinkers and one of the leading co-working space providers in the country, in association with Toyota Mobility Challenge and Deloitte Future of Mobility Solution Centre (FoM) hosted The City Architecture for Tomorrow Challenge (CATCH) 2020 Roadshow. Toyota Mobility Foundation launched CATCH, a global challenge to attract innovative, data driven entries from global participants, in Kuala Lumpur on 13 February 2020. The challenge was aimed, to raise efficiency in urban planning, and drive forward the future of mobility.

As part of the promotional and outreach effort, roadshows were held in 8 cities across Asia (Bangalore, Mumbai, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Singapore). India is home to more than 5000 startups and is the largest start-up hub in the continent. These roadshows aimed to increase exposure and outreach to the public and entrepreneur community and encourage participation in the challenge.

Toyota Mobility Foundation chose Workafella in India to promote the challenge as Workafella houses a large community of start-ups and SMEs. Workafella carried out various awareness and promotional activities amongst its networking community. The roadshows were hosted at the Bengaluru and Mumbai Workafella centers on 17^th and 18^th February 2020 respectively.

The City Architecture for Tomorrow Challenge is a global challenge co-developed by the Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF) and Deloitte Future of Mobility Solution Centre (FoM), to support and source for innovative, data-driven solutions worldwide to mitigate the risk of urbanisation and install efficiency in urban planning and transportation management.

CATCH aimed to address mobility challenges in Kuala Lumpur with a global call for solutions, for a period of 8 months, where participants – from start-ups, academic and research institutions to corporates, general public – conceptualized and implement the developed solutions that were dynamic, intelligent and data-driven to design future city infrastructures.

“Workafella constantly aims at bringing the best of opportunities to its community. Collaboration with Toyota Mobility Foundation and Deloitte and being the host of the Roadshows in Bengaluru and Mumbai, we tried to provide an excellent opportunity to our technology start-ups, corporates & SME partners to participate and network with other contemporaries from across the continent,” said, Mr. Gurbinder Rathha, Founder & Managing Director, Workafella. “With an overall sum of 1.5M USD, a chance to work with TMF & the Kuala Lumpur government, investment & mentoring opportunities, CATCH 2020 is an opportunity that can help empower and excite our Workafella community” added Mr. Gurbinder.

The roadshows witnessed panel discussion from various industry leaders like Mr. Arun Vinayak, Founding Partner and Chief product officer, Ather Energies, Mr. Ravikumar Kumarasamy, Director, Red bus, and Mr. Seshadri, VP Sales South - ALD Automotive in Bengaluru. Mr. Miten Mehta, Chief Alliance Officer, Clever, Mr. Devesh Chawla, founder & CEO, Chatur Ideas, and Mr. Amit Agrawal, Co-founder & CTO – sRIDE, hosted discussions in Mumbai. The panel discussions were followed by Q&A and networking sessions.

About Workafella

Workafella, creates workspaces for the evolving economy, the daring thinkers and unstoppable doers who give shape to dreams. At present Workafella offers 15,000 seats, out of which 9000 is fully operational and another 6000 in fit-out stage. The home-grown co-working company is a leading co-working space provider in the South, and hosts workplaces envisioned for great ideas and inspired collaborations. By 2020, Workafella targets to reach 25000 seats by expanding to new cities.

Workafella traditionally built on Indian ethos offers energetic and vibrant environment for the young and bold minds. The management with their in-depth knowledge in hospitality and real estate segment provide not just office space but a whole business ecosystem. With the aim of creating a community, nuanced spaces were created for each city, keeping in mind the local culture, food habits, and social norms

Given the nature and adaptability of workspaces, Workafella can accommodate clients from a variety of sectors from sporty upbeat startups to professional MNC setups. Workafella is also a keen believer in building communities around the cities that the brand is present in, from supporting homegrown sports teams to women empowerment support groups.

Workafella collaborates with TiE Chennai & The Chennai Angels to assist over 500 Startups across the Country

Chennai, September 11th, 2019: Workafella, a young vibrant arena for doers and thinkers and one of the leading co-working space providers in the country, in association with TiE Chennai and The Chennai Angels is all set to identify, mentor and fund start-ups across all the Workafella centres in India. With this initiative, Workafella, TiE and The Chennai Angels aim at helping over 500 start-ups across the country.

Through this partnership, TiE Chennai (https://chennai.tie.org/) will aim to inspire, educate and mentor partners and entrepreneurs at Workafella, guiding them with various organisational techniques. TiE Chennai seeks to foster the spirit of entrepreneurship within both Chennai as well as the state of Tamil Nadu. TiE Chennai will hold regular workshops and events at Workafella bringing charter members, entrepreneurs, business leaders, venture capitalists, SMEs and government bodies together to share their expertise, success stories, and business opportunities as well as help raise capital by creating a platform for networking.  

The Chennai Angels TCA, (www.thechennaiangels.com) is one of India’s most active angel investing groups. Founded in the year 2007, it is comprised of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders with an impressive record of starting and scaling up large enterprises. With this partnership, The Chennai Angels will also extend support, nurturing and mentoring next generation entrepreneurs. They will help partners at all Workafella centres venturing into the world of business through funding capital. Besides providing capital, The Chennai Angels will also share entrepreneurial wisdom and facilitate networking.

In addition, Mr. Gurbinder Rathha, Founder & Managing Director, Workafella brings in decades of experience from a wide range of industries such as garment, hospitality, corporate real estate and infrastructure to share his extensive knowledge and help develop progressive start-up communities. Workafella also through its community-sharing platform ‘Namaste Workafella’ has been motivating its community by celebrating distinguished works that have made a difference to the society. The platform has been bringing in experts, activists, environmentalists, influencers from various walks of life to inspire and educate through their insights and stories.

Mr. Gurbinder Rattha, Founder & Managing Director, Workafella said, “Under these partnerships with both TiE Chennai and The Chennai Angels, we aim to guide entrepreneurs at Workafella in shaping their organizations by training them with the required management skill sets and techniques. We strongly believe the expertise and networking opportunities that this association will bring in together will be extremely beneficial to take their business to next level.

At Workafella we are committed to be a great value addition to our partners at every step of their journey.”

Speaking on the partnership, Ms. Akhila Rajeshwar – Executive Director, TiE Chennai said, “TiE Chennai’s primary agenda is to foster entrepreneurship and unleash the true potential in every individual entrepreneur and startup. As part of our focus initiatives, TiE Chennai has plans to organize a few of our monthly events at Workafella, the largest co-working space provider in the city that offers top of the line infrastructure support which is crucial for every emerging startup.”

Mr Chandran Krishnan, CEO, The Chennai Angels said, “We are excited to collaborate with Workafella as their community partner to nurture, fund and mentor start-ups operating from their offices.”

WORKAFELLA, A HOME GROWN COWORKING BRAND AWARDED ‘THE BEST CO-WORKING & ENTERPRISE OFFICE SPACE’

~ Aims to reach the milestone of 100,000 seats by 2023 ~ 

Bengaluru, 3rd June, 2019: Workafella, a young vibrant arena for doers and thinkers and one of the leading co-working space providers in the country, has been recognized and awarded the ‘Best co-working & Enterprise office space’ award at the Times Business Award 2019. Mr. Gubinder Rattha, Managing Director and Founder, Workafella, was at the event to receive the award from veteran actor Mr. Anupam Kher at the Sheraton Grand, Bengaluru.

The second edition of The Times Business Awards, one of the most prestigious and significant awards for the business industry, saw a galaxy of top-notch business promoters in full attendance. The awards, conceived to felicitate business players that have made revolutionary advancements in their eco-system, such as  Auto, Retail, Real Estate, Health Care, Ecommerce, FMCG, Start-ups, Designs, Talent, Entertainment, Fashion, Jewelry,  Hospitality and the Service  Industry,  just to name a few.

Workafella, being a homegrown Indian brand, understands the pulse of the Indian work culture and accordingly provides nuanced workspaces depending on the city. The brand believes in providing collaborative workspaces and communities for entrepreneurs, freelancers, creative and independent workers to learn, grow and excel together by enabling exchange of knowledge, ideas and inspiration with one another. Workafella, also offers custom-built formats for large corporates that provides a professional platform of a corporate, the flexibility of a café and the benefits of networking with various other small and medium enterprises and corporates within their co-working space. Offering its customers an end-to-end business ecosystem, varying from HR support, IT infrastructure, maintenance, housekeeping, security, financial services with flexible office plans.

Speaking on winning the award, Mr. Rattha said, “We at Workafella are delighted to be awarded the ‘‘Best co-working & Enterprise office space’ by the prestigious Times Group at its business awards 2019. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Workafella team that have shown exemplary efforts to ensure that we surpass our client’s expectations. We are glad that our efforts have contributed towards growth in the industry and look forward to bringing in significant transformation to the co-working space segment. We thank the jury and panelists of the awards for acknowledging our work in the space and recognizing our efforts with this Award.”

“Workafella’s co-working spaces are ergonomically designed and spacious to provide an optimum work environment and offer opportunities for clients to be part of our social events to unwind and network with professionals from various industries. Workafella is also looking to launch the largest coworking centers in Hyderabad and Chennai and aims at having 100,000 workstations by 2023” added, Mr. Rattha.

Establishing its first chain of co-working spaces in metro cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai with multiple centres, Workafella is also looking to expand further across to Delhi NCR, Pune, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Kochi.

About Workafella

Workafella, creates workspaces for the evolving economy, the daring thinkers and unstoppable doers who give shape to dreams. At present Workafella offers 15,000 seats, out of which 9000 is fully operational and another 6000 in fit-out stage. The homegrown co-working company is a leading co-working space provider and hosts workplaces envisioned for great ideas and inspired collaborations. By 2023 Workafella targets to reach 100,000 seats.               

A part of the Rattha group, Workafella, offers an energetic and vibrant environment for the young and bold minds. The group with their in-depth knowledge in hospitality and real estate segment provide not just office space but a whole business ecosystem. The company is the first to offer a 24/7 office space with inclusive price and no hidden costs. With the aim of creating a community, nuanced spaces were created for each city, keeping in mind the local culture, food habits, and social norms.