Amit Ramani (born April 15, 1974) is one of India’s serial entrepreneurs who started Awfis (co-working space) in 2015. Amit Ramani’s wish to pursue Architecture came as a huge surprise. He graduated in B. Arch in the year 1994 from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi India . He holds a master’s degree in Architecture (the Year 1999) from Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. Additionally, he also holds a specialized master’s degree in Real Estate and Workplace Strategy (the Year 2001) from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
In his early career, Amit worked as a senior consultant with HOK, and later worked as a business partner with Bank of America. After spending around 12 years in the US, he came back to India and co-founded three businesses, NELSON, Petra and Awfis.
Awfis is an Indian company that offers co-working spaces to the startups , freelancers and entrepreneurial communities. It was founded in 2015 and has more than 62,000 seats in 100 centers across India.
It introduced a mobile app that enables the users to book office and meeting spaces in its centers across the country.
The first Awfis center opened in April in Delhi. As of March 2016, it had 4,000 seats across Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore.
In October 2016, Awfis started the first out of a van Mobile office in New Delhi with the options of Wi-Fi, teleconferencing, a printer, meeting table, pantry, and others.
Awfis provides meeting rooms on rent within luxury hotels like Trident, Lemon Tree, Marine Plaza, and Sarovar & Hyatt across multiple cities.
In August 2019, Awfis raised $30 million in Series D funding led by ChrysCapital
On 21 Jan, 2021, Tesla India books one-seat office in Awfis Bengaluru.
In February 2021, Realty Firm Prestige Group has tied up with Awfis to set-up six coworking spaces of around 4,000 seats in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai which will be operational between April and July in 2021.
Currently, Awfis operates in NCR,Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Chennai Bhubaneswar Indore with upcoming centers in Jaipur , Lucknow.
With a passion to create inspirational workspace solutions, Amit Ramani founded Awfis Space Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (‘Awfis’) in April, 2015. Over the last few years, Awfis has evolved from being coworking network to a fully tech-enabled workspace solutions platform that provides products across the spectrum of work requirements including Flex Workspaces, Enterprise Workspace Solution, Design & Build Solution (Awfis Transform), IntegratedFacility Management (Awfis Care), Remote Working Solutions & Work From Home Solution.
Awfis currently has 100+ centres and 62000+ seats across 14 cities and is focused on redefining the way work gets done in the current business environment, by providing an ecosystem of inspiring workspaces for the innovative freelancers, entrepreneurs and corporates for their changing business needs. Members get benefits of using custom-sized, multi-location workspaces on a flexible lease tenor ranging from an hour to one year (or more) depending on their work requirements.
The comprehensive Awfis solution (desk, Wi-Fi, printing, meeting rooms, permanent address etc.) provides everything that an office user will require, at extremely competitive costs making “Awfis, the new office”. Awfis has a total member base of 1500+ companies and 28,000+ professionals ranging from India’s coolest start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.
Awfis curates 500+ exclusive events, workshops and experiences every year for its community members. Under its Rewards Program, Awfis has also curated 100+ strategic partnerships that provide its community members seamless access to leading service providers making it a one-stop-shop for all requirements of an emerging corporate’s set up.
This story appeared in the 1 March, 2022 issue of Icons of Indian Business and was originally published at : Amit Ramani : Founder of Awfis (co-working spaces)