Since the first coworking site opened in 2005, thousands of such agile workplaces have emerged worldwide, with more than 26,000 coworking sites expected to open by 2025 according to Statista. With the pandemic hurtling the workforce into uncertainty, coworking has increasingly gained popularity due to its flexibility and highly adaptive nature.
Active with 5 sites in 3 vital cities, Daftarkhwan is the fastest-growing network of coworking spaces in Pakistan, forging a diverse community driven by ambition.
However, coworking is still new to Pakistan and therefore riddled with common misconceptions like:
Freelancers Dominate Coworking Spaces
While it’s true that freelancers are the largest coworking demographic in the world, flexible working environments, characteristic of a coworking space, are gaining popularity with enterprise companies. Our internal research revealed that 87% of the Daftarkhwan community consists of enterprise companies such as Li & Fung, World Bank, and Uber compared to 13% freelancers.
Daftarkhwan offers coworking shared halls to freelancers, dedicated workers, and small teams, enhancing opportunities for networking and expansion in a new entrepreneurial environment. Simultaneously, Daftarkhwan’s enterprise solution opens an array of customisable options. These include bespoke flagship sites for companies, offices tailored to the specific business requirements, data storage spaces and installement of extra security measures such as biometric systems.
Tech Startups Overrun Co-working
As the tech industry shifted to hybrid workspaces during the pandemic, it fueled the demand for co-working spaces which in turn strengthened the assumption that coworking mostly caters to tech businesses. While 32.5% of Daftarkhwan’s community comprises of technology based businesses such as Tintash, OneByte and Opay, the remaining67.5% comprises a variety of industries, ranging from Trading, Health, Education, Consulting, Creative and Advertising.
Even within the tech businesses at Daftarkhwan, there’s great diversity, from IoT, software solutions, AI, and blockchain to game development, healthtech, and edutech.
Large Spaces Only Suited to Extroverts
Typically, people often associate co-working with a loud boisterous environment and open plan spaces. daftarkhwan caters to those who thrive in this atmosphere through their shared halls, prime for networking, and lounges, ripe with lively interactions, budding connections and rousing rounds of Tekken. However, for those who work better in more private settings, Daftarkhwan offers dedicated team rooms, huddle rooms, and skype pods, allowing an unwavering focus.
Daftarkhwan has it all — spacious dedicated offices for teams of four, customized larger team offices such as Starz Play, Alchemative and Jugnu with crews of up to 100 members, compact spaces such as huddle rooms, and skype pods for members to dip in for quick meetings and phone calls.
“As an ambivert I need both, the opportunity to talk to people and the opportunity to isolate when I want to and you can do that here which is incredible” says Syed Faraz Ali, Head of Expansion at Noon Academy, an interactive online learning platform.
Working 9–5
Most corporate work spaces operate 9–5, but Daftarkhwan lets you keep your own time by being open Monday through Saturday from 9am to 9pm. With nocturnal packages running through Daftarkhwan | North (Islamabad) and Daftarkhwan | Central (Lahore) operating 24/7, creating space for those individuals that are more productive during the night.
Though there are many misconceptions regarding coworking, it provides some of the most flexible, time-efficient and productive workspaces. Still a relatively new concept to Pakistan, Daftarkhwan continues to bring coworking to prominence.