ICICI Bank leases 820 desks at WeWork India in Mumbai

Bengaluru: Premium flexible workspace operator WeWork India has leased around 820 desks to ICICI Bank at its centre in suburban Mumbai, said two people familiar with the transaction.

The desks are spread across 42,000 sq ft at WeWork India's centre at ‘Spectrum Tower’ building in the Malad area.“The lease tenure is for 15 months as of now. ICICI Bank will use it for its IT, tech and support teams,” said one of the two people mentioned above,who declined to be named.

ICICI Bank had earlier taken around 450 seats on lease in October 2020 at WeWork's centre at Oberoi Commerz in suburban Goregaon. It gave up that space in 2023,and has now returned to take up a larger space.

“Companies that worked in a partial hybrid mode after the pandemic, are calling back all their employees to office, which effectively means bigger requirement for office space,” the second person said.

WeWork and ICICI Bank didn't respond to queries sent on Tuesday.

While the estimated value of the recent lease is not known, WeWork charges around ₹15,000-17,000 per desk at its centre in the Spectrum Tower building.

Large, mainstream companies are steadily adopting a mix of traditional office space and flexible workspaces as a strategy to optimize real estate usage.

India's total stock of flex workspaces hit 74 million square feet across the top seven cities in 2024. Property advisory JLL India in February estimated that the operational footprint of flex space across the top seven cities will surpass 100 million sq ft by 2026, underscoring its pivotal role in shaping the country's evolving office landscape.

WeWork India, a leading operator, has been steadily increasing its footprint in multiple cities. In June, WeWork India said it signed leases for two new centres - WeWork EON Free Zone in Pune, and WeWork Ramanujan Intellion Park in Chennai.

Together, the new space leased is over 200,000 sq ft in the two cities. Both the centres are set to open in the second half of 2024-25.
WeWork India has an operational portfolio of 7.8 million sq ft, across 68 centres in eight cities.

Recently, Samsung India Electronics leased around 1000 desks, spanning 61,230 sq ft, at WeWork’s Olympia Cyberspace facility in Chennai for 42 months, to expand its managed office operations in the region.