For years, Indian offices were measured in square feet, not seats.
Companies leased entire floors, locked themselves into long contracts and waited for demand to catch up.
Then came a quiet disruptor that turned ownership into access. Awfis Space Solutions didn’t just rent out desks; it built a business on flexibility. Tenants got access instead of ownership, and landlords got occupancy instead of idle space. What emerged was not a real estate company, but a platform that made real estate more efficient.
Listed in May 2024 at Rs 383 a share, Awfis now trades around Rs 546, up nearly 42% in just over a year. For a company that runs offices but doesn’t own them, that’s a strong debut.
The model sounds simple but isn’t easy to pull off.
Awfis has built the country’s largest network of flexible workspaces by expanding fast while keeping capital use tight. It now operates 246 centres with roughly 1.65 lakh seats as of June 2025, placing it among the biggest workspace operators alongside Smartworks and WeWork India.
From property to platform
Awfis operates on what it calls a Managed Aggregation model. It partners with landlords who share both capital expenditure and revenue. About 64% of its seats work under this arrangement, which lets the company grow without heavy debt or long-term leases. Every new centre signed between June 2024 and June 2025 is in a Grade A building.
This capital-light model shows up in the numbers.
In the September 2025 quarter, Awfis generated a total revenue of Rs 367 crore, up 25% year-on-year. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margins came in at 36% up from 34% a year ago.
Mature centres, older than a year, run at 84% occupancy. Overall occupancy sits at 73%, weighed down by new centres that opened recently. About a third of all seats are in facilities less than 12 months old.
That gap reflects rapid expansion. About one-third of all seats are in centres that opened in the past year. Occupancy usually rises as these centres mature.
The corporate shift
Flexible workspaces began as a start-up story. Awfis has turned it into a corporate one. The company now has over 3,200 active clients, of which 51 occupy more than 100 seats and nine take over 300.
In the September 2025 quarter, it signed contracts for 15,000 new seats compared with 13,000 a year earlier.
The shift to corporate clients has changed the business profile. The average tenure is 36 months with a 24-month lock-in, and over 40% of clients occupy multiple centres. Enterprise users now make up 59% of seats and nearly two-thirds of total revenue. What began as a transactional model has become a steady, recurring one.
That shift towards long-term enterprise clients has brought both stability and competition.
A Competitive Market, A Disciplined Player
The flexible workspace business is booming again.
Everyone wants a slice of it, from global brands to local operators opening centres in smaller cities. But growth alone rarely decides who survives. In this business, the real test is staying full, not just expanding fast.
That is where Awfis has an edge. Its strength lies in pre-leasing and long-term enterprise contracts that keep utilisation steady even when demand cools. As smaller players struggle with rising costs, consolidation is inevitable. When that happens, the branded networks with scale and reputation usually take over. Awfis looks well placed for that phase.
After several years of rapid expansion, the company is now focussing on steady, profitable growth.
Growth without concrete
After clocking in sales of Rs 1,208 crore, up 42% in FY25, it has guided for about 30% revenue growth in FY26, with mature centres maintaining occupancy above 80%. It is also guiding for a marginal uptick in operating margins.
As of September 2025, Awfis had around 1.47 lakh operational seats across 247 centres. Including centres under fit-out and those with signed LOIs, total capacity exceeded 1.7 lakh seats. The company expects to cross 1.7 lakh operational seats by March 2026.
Expansion into smaller cities such as Lucknow, Guwahati and Coimbatore now contributes about 15% of capacity, growing at roughly 25% annually. These markets offer lower rentals, faster breakeven and rising corporate demand.
The boardroom mix
Awfis Space Solutions is led by its founder and a professional management team.
Amit Ramani, 49, is the Founder, Chairman and Managing Director. He holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the University of Kansas, USA, and has over two decades of experience in design, real estate and workspace strategy. Before founding Awfis in 2015, he worked with Nelson US and other international architecture firms.
Sumit Lakhani, 42, is the Chief Executive Officer and has been with Awfis since its early years, helping scale operations, marketing and enterprise business. He holds an MBA in Marketing and Finance.
Ravi Dugar is the Chief Financial Officer, overseeing finance, investor relations and corporate strategy.
The company has a nine-member board, including five independent directors and one woman independent director, offering a reasonably balanced governance structure. Promoters hold about 20.4% of equity, while institutional investors such as Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital), ChrysCapital and Ashish Kacholia together own roughly 40% across equity and preference share classes.
There is no pledging of promoter shares, and the company remains effectively debt-free, a sign of financial discipline. Promoter holding is modest, and while the presence of strong institutional backers provides comfort, investors should still be watchful of the ownership structure.
Valuation
At the current market price of Rs 6546, Awfis trades at about 76 times earnings and 7.8 times book value. Those numbers look expensive for a real estate firm, but Awfis is being valued like a service platform. Its return on equity stands at 26% and return on capital employed at about 13%. Both should improve as new centres fill up.
The fine print
For all its progress, risks remain. Occupancy levels depend on corporate leasing cycles, and competition from players such as Smartworks, WeWork India and Indiqube is intensifying. New centres take six to twelve months to stabilise, which makes margins volatile.
Cash flows are improving but uneven, and with valuations stretched, any delay in expansion or dip in utilisation could hit sentiment quickly.
Still, Awfis has one advantage most property-linked smallcaps don’t: a balance sheet without debt and a growing base of sticky enterprise clients.
The investor takeaway
Awfis is not a conventional real estate story. It doesn’t build, it orchestrates.
In a way, it’s doing to office space what aggregators once did to taxis and hotels; using flexibility to extract efficiency.
That makes it one of the few smallcaps where high risk comes with genuinely high potential. For now, the market seems happy to pay for the idea of flexibility. The test will come when growth slows and investors ask what they’re really buying — the business or the story.
Disclaimer:
The purpose of this article is only to share interesting charts, data points and thought-provoking opinions. It is NOT a recommendation. If you wish to consider an investment, you are strongly advised to consult your advisor. This article is strictly for educative purposes only.
Manvi Aggarwal has been tracking the stock markets for nearly two decades. She spent about eight years as a financial analyst at a value-style fund, managing money for international investors. That’s where she honed her expertise in deep-dive research, looking beyond the obvious to spot value where others didn’t. Now, she brings that same sharp eye to uncovering overlooked and misunderstood investment opportunities in Indian equities. As a columnist for LiveMint and Equitymaster, she breaks down complex financial trends into actionable insights for investors.
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