New ‘hackpacker’ hostels are offering start-ups a place to live, work and network with a like-minded community at pocket-friendly prices.Shashikiran Rao had an idea a year and half ago that has only now taken shape, form and a name. It’s a hacker hostel in Bengaluru called Construkt — a co-living space where young start-ups and creatives can bunk down when they travel to the city on work, in search of work, or even chasing down an idea that will one day work. It’s an extension of the co-working concept, only here, you can live and work with others in the ‘gig economy’.
Construkt works out of a leased bungalow in Indiranagar, a venture that cost Rao and his co-founder, Karan Bahadur Rs 22 lakh. Here, five rooms can accommodate 20 people on bunk-beds. There’s a communal kitchen, a common room, a terrace, clean bathrooms, books, wi-fi, and estate coffee on offer. “Our aim was to put out a minimal viable product that could be market-tested for workability. If it works, we’ll scale it up,” says 36-year-old Rao.
Abroad, success stories have already scaled up. WeWork, a New Yorkbased co-working rental company with units in 27 cities (India is on the cards) and a valuation of $16 billion, is expecting its new co-living company, WeLive, to pull in revenue of $636 million by 2018 and attract as many as 34,000 members. Another co-living enterprise in Brooklyn, Common, has received 2,000 applications for 30 spots.
Demand, it seems, is through the roof. In India, it’s the supply that has to catch up. In November, Rao and Bahadur commissioned a market survey among 600 people in the start-up ecosystem. They learned on average 18,000 room nights are consumed by start-ups annually in Bengaluru, NCR and Mumbai. The nightly hotel spend is between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,500. “What their travel sorely lacked, they said, was ‘community connect’ — opportunities to interact with others in the business,” says Rao, “They typically conduct their meetings in coffee shops and co-working spaces.” A more immersive environment was yet to be made available where they could eat, sleep, hack, repeat. A co-living space could be the answer.
They can range from the exotic to the hermetic. Co-living places can be tropical paradises like Hubud in Bali, or they could be multi-storeyed apartment buildings like Common’s in Brooklyn. In India, they’re mostly small bungalows, with four to five dorms and the bare necessities. “You get to hear the inside news and learn new things in these places,” says Siddhesh Tiwatne, co-founder of Go-Biggi, a marketing platform. The Pune-based entrepreneur spent three nights at Construkt last week while visiting Bengaluru to meet potential partners.
Mukul Pasricha, founder of a coworking property in Gurgaon, recently created a similar model called Spring House. “The founder of a food tech startup wanted a bed at our coworking place,” says Pasricha, who saw potential in the bed-and-board model. So he started two — on Golf Course Road and DLF Phase 4.
“There’s great demand for such spaces as Gurgaon is the second biggest start-up hub after Bengaluru,” says the ISB grad, who’s currently housing an Italian, an American and a Japanese national.
The start-up culture is undergirded by peer networks, new technologies and collaborations, funding tip-offs and insider advice. Landlords like Pasricha and Rao host networking events to help their tenants build their enterprises. Two-week-old Construkt is planning to organize hackathons and ‘Construkt Crawls’ through Bengaluru’s start-up districts, throwing in field trips to e-com offices and talks by founders, funders and others. In addition, there’ll be discount passes to partner events.
The idea is a throwback to the backpackers’ hostel, where travellers swap notes and flaunt travel scars; at a hackpackers’ hostel, they’ll (hopefully) share contacts of angel investors, and lessons on misguided business moves. Another lure of the model is that it’s easy on the self-starter’s lean pocket: the monthly rate is around Rs 15,000, with discounts on long stays.
But not all of them are sticking to the start-up cities. The founder of a Gurgaon-based co-working space has plans to build two facilities — one each in Goa and Jaipur. “The demand is more urgent in these places as entrepreneurs here don’t have easy access to the required resources.
Moreover, many international clients wish to live and work out of tourist towns,” he said, on condition of anonymity. The founder of a B&B in Bengaluru says the market is ready for the model. Stanley Lobo of Electric Cats says many of his clients are entrepreneurs who work and live out of his establishment for days, even months. But a specialized hostel may be the need of the hour. “If you come to Bengaluru for the first time and want to build your network in the entrepreneurial system, it can be a lengthy process,” Rao points out. This, then, is a foot in the door.