There is an upward trend in the number of organizations choosing co-working spaces or shared office spaces. Some reasons for its popularity include the fact that they offer flexibility in terms of commitment, foster entrepreneurship, bring together professionals, help expand network, nurture creativity, and exchange of ideas. This opens doors to possibilities and exposure to a vast network of professionals, start-ups, and entrepreneurs.
Pannal is an umbrella entity offering a community of resources under one roof for all business needs. It has evolved as a unique business unit of shared services including managed office spaces, business support (CXO & BPO), legal services and IT/ITES support and solutions, to incubate and help businesses grow.
In an interview with Insights Success, the team at Pannal’s Chrysler Tech Centre, shares insightful perspectives and opinions about the platform, its key aspects, and how it strives towards a better tomorrow.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
What are the values, vision, and mission of your company?
We provide high quality and affordable office spaces that cater to businesses of all sizes, whether you are a freelancer, startup, SME or a larger organisation. Our vibrant spaces are uniquely designed to provide hassle free workflows to our members and foster productivity in the workspace.
Further, our incubation solutions have been developed by an expert team and network of professionals who have had many years of experience in different areas and industries.
Some key values of Pannal include:
- A One-stop shop for multiple solutions
- Access to a range of specialised professional services needed to develop and grow your business
- Strong leadership team to oversee the progress of deliverables and other issues related to the overall performance, productivity, commitment and behaviour of resources
- Strong and growing mentor network, to allow startups reduce their management gap in knowledge and experience
- Cost reduction for our members through a shared services model through lowered overheads and operational costs
- Scalability and growth with relatively lower incremental costs
Kindly describe about the types of facilities you offer within your co-working space?
Our workspaces are vibrantly designed with various space configurations, to suit all kinds of business needs, enhance productivity and for our members to think creatively.
Our office space solutions include individual and multiple open workstations in a shared ecosystem, private offices for teams of all sizes and large corporate offices.
Some facilities include:
- Shared resources such as meeting rooms, conference room, interview/ telephone booths, event spaces and much more
- Integrated IT bundle with an onsite IT support team to take care of IT needs and disruptions
- F&B facilities round the clock
- Breakout lounges, cafeteria and green spaces to take a break, unwind and collaborate with your team
- Uninterrupted internet connectivity
- Effective power-backup system
- Housekeeping and Maintenance team
- Administrative Support
Our Co-working space in Dehradun is also in a safe and green building, equipped with VRV air-conditioning, sewage treatment plant, rain-water harvesting, garbage disposal, LED lighting and much more. In order to ensure safety of our members, our space is built on a complete steel structure, is earthquake resistant, and with fire-fighting systems.
How has your company sustained its market competency? What are the characteristics that set it apart?
Chrysler Tech Centre in a novel concept in a city like Dehradun, where we offer a high quality workplace that is affordable and uniquely designed to cater to business needs of start-up’s and SMEs. Coupled with that, our members value our incubation support and value-added services such as hosting facilities, F&B facilities, IT support, recruitment, payroll management and CXO support, amongst other services. This ecosystem of essential services under one roof allows Chrysler Tech Centre to be a unique incubation centre that allow our members to grow their business.
Share your views on the latest trends in the Co-working space industry. How are you keeping up with its dynamics?
Co-working trends are constantly evolving in India. The trends are further not consistent as between Tier-I cities vis-à-vis Tier-II or Tier-III cities, as the level of services, expectations and market needs are different.
Accordingly, as we evolve, we are learning more about subtle nuances in the Co-working and managed office spaces industry with regard to different locations, target audiences in those locations and market needs of different types of consumers, and developing our services accordingly.
Furthermore, an important trend we have noticed is that our members value shared resources such as meeting rooms, break-out lounges, cafeteria etc. in addition to just their workstations, and want to use them as and when needed without committing to long-term arrangements for such spaces. However, when it comes to workstations, they prefer lockable private offices, even if it is for 3-4 people sized teams, as opposed to traditional open co-working spaces in a shared atmosphere. Accordingly, our spaces have been altered to accommodate this need where we have private offices for teams of all sizes, whether for 3-4 people teams or 50-100 people teams.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned, that have influenced the journey of the company.
As we started interacting with our co-working members in both Dehradun and Delhi, we realised that there is a wide gap that exists between the demand for high quality management services by growing companies and the inadequate supply of such services at the right level of cost, ownership, quality and timelines.
Accordingly, in addition to just providing workspace, we have evolved as an incubation centre with the aim to enhance the limited management bandwidth of businesses, and increase the amount of time and resources their management spend to focus on their core business activities, while we take care of the day-to-day operational tasks and back-office business processes
What are your future plans for the company? Where do you see the company in the years to come?
While our aim is to expand to more locations in both Tier-I and Tier-II cities, we want to grow organically and in a phased manner, so that the intimacy our members currently share with our senior management and mentors is not diluted and we can continue offering high quality services to each member as we scale.
We also intend to keep adding to our partner and mentor network, so that the Pannal umbrella keeps growing. An important vertical we plan to expand into is seed-stage funding and alternative funding options for start-up’s and SMEs
About the Leaders
The founding and senior management team at Pannal has a professional background with decades of experience in startups, SMEs and large MNC conglomerates.
Manav Mukul is the Co-founder, Head of Sales and Operations at Pannal, with a focus on leveraging his experience to provide the best customer experience to its members. He holds a Bachelor Degree in International Hotel Management from Les Roches, Switzerland in addition to an MBA in leadership & finance from Glion Institute of Higher Education, Switzerland.
He is also an alumni of the British School, New Delhi. Before Co-founding Pannal, he worked with established hotel conglomerates such as the Westin, Taj Palace and Lemon Tree. His efforts are targeted to create the most conducive environment at Pannal’s workspaces where freelancers, startups and SMEs can incubate, scale and grow. He adds value to the community at Pannal through his global education and industry experience in hospitality.
Mukul Agarwal is the Co-founder and Senior Partner at Pannal. He is a business leader, disruptor, Founder, angel investor, and a professional mentor. He brings in more than 29 years of general management experience, P&L management, business strategy & planning, evolving new business models. He has global experience across India, South-East Asia, Europe, and UAE.
He has led different portfolios including finance, accounting, tax, HR, IT, Procurement, Infrastructure Development, Corporate Simplification, BCP & Security, CSR, Sustainability, adherence to carbon footprint, and other cross functional business operations.
He has also managed legal & statutory compliances, being part of management committees, arbitrations and employee litigations. Combining his business and management expertise, he has focused on providing strategic and operational support to startups in their evolution process as their virtual COO/ CEO/ CFO.
Shafali Agarwal is the Co-founder and Senior Partner at Pannal. Her experience is a blend of over more than 25 years in direct industry as well as advisory. She brings with her a rich experience in providing support to different operational verticals including finance, accounting, HR, Facility, Administration and Legal compliances.
She has worked in various Indian and foreign organizations across India and UAE. Her core expertise is to be able to act as a business partner to the core management team, bringing in-depth experience of various industries and integrating different organizational verticals.
Shantanu Mukul is the Co-founder and Legal at Pannal. He holds law degrees from Durham University in England and National Law University, Delhi. He is also an alumni of the British School, New Delhi. He has gained legal experience in corporate laws, M&A, competition law, constitutional law, litigation, direct & indirect taxes. An active member at Pannal, his efforts are targeted to manage the legal framework, design and develop the infrastructure, drive the marketing drive, ensure client satisfaction and provide operational support to the entire team.
