Once upon a time a confused and unhappy on work life software engineer, Brad Neuberg, wanted freedom in the workplace as well as structured and community with working with others had invented the concept “Coworking”. I will not repeat the story here, you can find it from Brad Neuberg’s own blog. Inspiring from Brad, Ardites is offering affordable coworking space.
Coworking space is for freelancers, work remotely and startups who can’t afford to pay for an office space. Now let’s consider the work environment in Dhaka. Because of the traffic jam, working remotely is the best option for a significant number of the jobs. Increasing number of coworking cultures worldwide is proof that people love to work surrounded by working people or it is not possible to be productive all the time working alone at home.
IWG (international Workplace Group) is an example of how the Coworking place is a dime a dozen nowadays especially in the developed countries. IWG has running Coworking places worldwide with 15 different names. They have 1,361 locations in America, 367 locations in UK, 1,365 locations in EMEA and 889 locations in Asia region. It is good to mention here that Regus, who has 2 Coworking places in Dhaka, is a company of IWG.
Company which has an office on the east side of Dhaka like Gulshan can have a workplace in the west side like Dhanmondi area for the employee living in that part of the city. Maintaining another office is a luxury from the operations point of view. What if they have an option to use a Coworking space in Dhanmondi area, no setup cost or operations management and employee has a great relief from the traffic jam.
Now If i give an example of my company, Ardites Bangladesh Ltd., Located in one or prime location of the city, the panthapath area, we have one Software Test Engineer working from home. We don’t have any complaints about her work performance so far. She is staying in Mirpur area. It took 3 to 4 hours for travel from home to office and office to home every day. She is saving 80hours every month which is healthy, financially convenient for her.
Facing this really everyday over the years, we have decided to open a Coworking place in our Panthapath office. It will have more than 30 seating capacity, 2 meeting rooms and lockers. Affordable price range, modern workplace facilities like Air Conditioner, Fast and Multiple internet connectivity, TV and multimedia projector, Commercial building with security are offered. Online reservation system will allow all to check the availability of the desks or meeting rooms, reserve and receive email notifications before the dates just in case you miss the date.
There are around 20 Coworking space providers active in Dhaka at the moment. Some of them are Moar at Banani and Dhanmondi, Hub Dhaka in mirpur, Workstation 101 in uttara, CO+LAB in Baridhara J block , Daffodil Business incubator, Office suites in Bananai, Suru Campur in Badda, Cista Co-working in Niketon, Regus in Gulshan and Panthapath, Ardites in Panthapath. We need more affordable coworking space in the near future.
