How Smartworks Turned Managed Workspaces Into An Enterprise Play

India’s flex workspace market is witnessing one of its strongest growth phases, with the total market capacity projected to expand to 140-145 Mn sq ft by FY28.

As enterprises expand across cities at an unprecedented pace and global companies scale their presence in India, the traditional model of long-term leases, heavy capex, and time-consuming office setups has begun cracking. 

The momentum in this shift comes from the surge in Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India. This booming segment is expected to drive demand for 160–200 Mn Sq Ft of office space by 2030, with flex workspaces likely to capture nearly half of this.

Yet, despite this growing relevance, flex workspaces weren’t always seen as enterprise-grade infrastructure. For years, they remained synonymous with startups, freelancers and bean-bag offices. 

This is why Neetish Sarda says that when he founded Smartworks, it was a contrarian bet. The Smartworks founder and managing director says that the market was not ready to understand that coworking as a space would mature and move beyond these ‘perks.’

As Sarda put it, the company saw that the real opportunity wasn’t that small teams and startups were looking for desks, but that large enterprises would eventually also gravitate towards such infrastructure. Smartworks chose to position itself as an enterprise infrastructure partner rather than a coworking space.  

Sarda recalls that the key was fundamentally rethinking what an office space could be. Traditional leasing models required companies to lock in capital for years, invest heavily in fit-outs, and wait nine to 12 months to get operational. For enterprises expanding across multiple cities, the model had become a bottleneck. 

Smartworks approached the problem differently. “Our view was that workspaces would evolve like cloud computing – companies would consume office infrastructure as a service, rather than owning it,” the MD added. 

That meant building not just offices, but fully managed, plug-and-scale environments that could be deployed quickly and operated seamlessly. 

This led to the creation of what Smartworks calls the ‘Managed Office Campus’.

The office space provider typically leases large campuses or entire buildings, integrating technology infrastructure, security systems, collaboration zones, wellness facilities and operational support into a single, standardised offering. The workplace can go live in 45-60 days. “Today, 90% of our revenue comes from enterprise clients,” Sarda told Inc42.

These campuses are built for scale. Enterprise can start with a few hundred seats and expand to thousands within the same ecosystem, often without relocating. The model also enables a consistent workplace experience across cities, an increasingly critical requirement for companies operating distributed teams.

But this wasn’t an easy sell in the early days.

When Smartworks began pitching this enterprise-first model, both investors and landlords were sceptical. The idea that large enterprises would move more than 1,000 employees into such environments seemed far-fetched. Convincing Fortune 500 companies to trust a new model meant proving reliability, security and execution capability at scale. 

Execution, ultimately, became the turning point. 

As early enterprise clients saw fully functional campuses being delivered within weeks, complete with enterprise-grade infrastructure, the perception began to shift. What began with individual deployments soon expanded into large-scale, multi-city rollouts. 

To support this demand, Smartworks adopted a cluster-based expansion strategy, deepening its presence in key business hubs rather than spreading itself thin across markets. This enabled the company to efficiently serve enterprise clients across locations, scaling to 66 centres across 15 cities (including Singapore) as well as several dedicated enterprise campuses.

Over time, this created an adoption flywheel. Today, 37% of the company’s rental revenue comes from large enterprises taking up over 1,000 seats, often across multiple locations. 

At the same time, competition in the flex workspace market has intensified, with players like Awfis and IndiQube scaling rapidly with distinct models. However, Smartworks differentiates itself by scaling with predictable demand and holding over 10% of India’s flex stock, the largest in the segment.

The Economics Behind The Business 

If Smartworks’ enterprise-first positioning was contrarian to traditional flex workspaces, its approach to capital was even more so.

At a time when flex workspace companies were raising large venture rounds and chasing rapid expansion, Smartworks chose to operate differently. The company built its business on the principle that one should raise only when the unit economics work.

Unlike many of its peers, Smartworks approached the business with a private equity mindset – focusing on cash flow, return on capital and long-term sustainability, rather than short-term growth spikes. Every expansion decision was closely tied to visibility on demand.

A key lever here has been its pre-fill strategy. Instead of building large campuses and hoping demand would follow, Smartworks often secures client commitments in advance, reducing vacancy risk. This demand-led approach, combined with long-term enterprise contracts, has enabled the company to scale with high predictability.

Scale, in turn, has reinforced Smartworks’ capital discipline.

Large campuses allow Smartworks to optimise its industry-leading capex and opex, driving down per-seat cost while improving operating efficiency. Standardisation across design, procurement and execution further reduces costs, while strong landlord partnerships help secure favourable commercial terms. As the centres mature, operating leverage kicks in — incremental revenue flows more efficiently to the bottom line, improving margins and returns.

At a broader industry level, Smartworks stands out by doubling down on large-format campuses and enterprise clients, with the company announcing its largest quarterly revenue of  ₹520 Cr in Q4 of FY26, and claims to run one of the largest seat capacities in the market. While this model demands a higher upfront investment, it creates a more predictable, recurring revenue base anchored in long-term contracts.

In FY26, the company delivered its first full year of reported PAT profitability of ₹11 Cr versus a loss of ₹63 Cr in FY25, alongside annualised revenue of ₹1,796 Cr, 31% year-on-year upside and an 17.5% EBITDA margin, signalling that scale was beginning to translate into cash generation. 

Equally critical has been the company’s focus on cash flow over optics.

With strong enterprise contracts and tight working capital cycles, as reflected in low debtor days, Smartworks has built a model in which operating cash flows are robust enough to support expansion. “In fact, as the portfolio has matured, the business has entered a self-sustaining growth cycle, without the need for external capital. The outcome is delivering predictable, annuity-like income streams at scale,” said Sarda.  

Smartworks has also been able to eliminate the asset-liability mismatch where operators pay fixed, long-term rent to landlords but earn uncertain, short-term revenue from clients. According to the company’s investor presentation, Smartworks’ committed revenue of around ₹5,200 Cr covers its committed rental obligations of over ₹1,592 Cr by nearly 2x, with locked-in client contracts.

According to Sarda, the company has also fully secured its FY27 supply pipeline, with meaningful visibility already established for FY28, positioning it ahead of demand in a supply-constrained office market. The company aims to add another 2.5 Mn to 3 Mn sq ft each year in its portfolio.

Bet On Large-Campus Blueprint  

Early in its journey, Smartworks made what seemed a risky bet at the time. Instead of building smaller centres like most flex operators, it chose to sign large-format campuses, often spanning hundreds of thousands of square feet.

For a young company in an unproven category, committing to such a scale raised obvious questions. What if demand didn’t materialise? What if occupancy remained low? What if the capital required to build and operate these spaces became a burden?

For Smartworks, this was a design choice. The company’s core belief was that the economics of managed workspaces only work meaningfully at scale. Large enterprises don’t look for 50 or 100 desks – they require hundreds, often thousands of seats in a single location. Smaller centres, by definition, couldn’t meet this demand efficiently.

By taking on entire buildings or large campuses, Smartworks was able to align its supply with enterprise demand from the outset.

This scale unlocks multiple structural advantages. Larger campuses drive lower per-seat costs, as fixed infrastructure – cafeterias, meeting rooms, collaboration zones, and amenities – is spread across a much larger base. They also improve negotiating power with landlords and vendors, enabling more favourable commercial terms.

Operationally, scale creates efficiency. Shared services become more effective, design flexibility increases and enterprises are able to create zoned environments for collaboration, focussed work and innovation within the same campus. 

More importantly, it strengthens client stickiness. Large campuses allow enterprises to centralise teams, build culture and scale internally without fragmentation. Once embedded, relocating becomes significantly harder – turning each campus into a long-term asset. 

But all this comes with certain risks. Taking on large real estate commitments exposes the business to occupancy shocks, especially during economic downturns. High upfront capex for custom fit-outs creates a cash-guzzling cycle, leaving providers vulnerable to interest rate spikes and inflationary construction costs. As global businesses pivot to virtual-first or distributed work models, large-format campuses face an utilisation risk, where physical assets might become expensive and under-occupied in a cooling economy.

Smartworks tried to hedge the business with a combination of structural safeguards. Its focus on mid–to–large enterprises with long lock-ins provides demand visibility, while no single client typically accounts for more than 30% of a centre’s capacity, reducing the concentration risk.

With 77% of its revenue coming from non-IT/ITeS sectors, the company has built a diversified client base spanning industries such as BFSI, manufacturing, consulting and other segments. This diversification, coupled with its pan-India presence, helps reduce dependence on any single industry or city.

The early bet on scale stands validated today with 65% of the company’s portfolio comprising campuses exceeding 300,000 sq ft.

Performance metrics further reinforce this. Mature centres typically operate at 89% occupancy, while the overall portfolio occupancy remains around 84% with committed occupancy of 93% across mature centres. Combined with long-term contracts and embedded expansion from existing clients, this creates a stable utilisation base that supports consistent margins.

GCC Boom Leads To Infra Thrust 

The next phase for Smartworks is being shaped by a rapid rise of Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India, with the sector projected to reach $105 Bn by 2030, supported by nearly 2,400 facilities employing over 2.8 Mn professionals. But for these companies, the requirement goes far beyond just office space. They need large, secure, technology-enabled campuses, coupled with speed, compliance, and operational readiness from day one.

This is where Smartworks sees its business model beginning to extend naturally. With its large-format campuses and enterprise-first approach, the company is structurally aligned with GCC requirements, which account for more than 15% of total revenue in FY26. These clients increasingly demand the ability to launch and scale operations within weeks, rather than months.

Smartworks is now pushing this a step further. Its purpose-built solution for GCCs,  SmartVantage, is helping it expand beyond workspace into a more comprehensive enterprise infrastructure platform. This includes support across legal set-up, compliance, talent and operational onboarding, effectively enabling global companies to build and run India operations through a single partner.

While the managed campus model addressed the ‘where’ of work, SmartVantage answered the ‘how’ of doing business in India.

The evolving needs of GCCs are also beginning to shape the products. Global enterprises demand higher levels of customisation, stricter compliance standards and a more sophisticated workplace environment – from innovation, labs and collaboration zones to wellness-focussed infrastructure. They also require distributed teams across cities, making their pan-India network a critical advantage.

As India continues to attract global enterprises and GCC investment accelerates, the demand for integrated, scalable infrastructure is only set to grow. And, in doing so, Smartworks is moving closer to its original thesis: transforming real estate from a static asset into a full-stack, service-led infrastructure platform for enterprises.

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