While Bengaluru’s start-up ecosystem boasts of an increasing number of collaborative working spaces, living options in the city have thus far been relatively traditional. A city-based firm however, is looking to change that with a hostel customised for the start-up environment.
“We wanted to create a co-living community space for the start-up ecosystem in the city,” says Shashikiran Rao, founder of Construkt-Startup Hostel located in Indiranagar. Launched on May 9, Construkt aims to give fresh entrepreneurs and people associated with start-ups in the city, an affordable living space where they can interact with other like-minded people. “Not every entrepreneur looks for luxury. With lifestyles quickly changing, we wanted to craft an informal yet interactive space,” Shashikiran explains.
Priced at Rs 850 a bed per day, Construkt offers bunk beds in rooms that are shared between two to eight persons, depending on customer requirements. Comfort and like-mindedness being the hostel’s key mantras, Construkt lays the emphasis on interactivity and affinity. “In a field as competitive as the start-up scene, we look to tap into the like-mindedness of people, giving them a flexible environment,” he continues.
While Shashikiran started Construkt Media in 2012 in a bid to cater to budding entrepreneurs through workshops and start-up festivals, the idea of a start-up hostel dawned on him in 2015. “I was travelling to Berlin for a business tour, where I started interacting with numerous start-up firms in the city, while making interesting friends. The amount of knowledge that was exchanged during that one trip was what inspired me to expand Construkt into a co-living hostel,” says the founder, who has worked closely with a full handful of start-ups himself.
The idea took root when the Construkt team commissioned a sampling survey. They found out that there was a requirement for close to 18,000 rooms in just the start-up segment, across the country. “A big chunk of those were from Bengaluru. That is how Construkt took the leap,” Shashikiran says.
Taking inspiration from backpackers’ hostels around the world, Construkt tags their customers as essentially ‘hack-packers’, and sees its co-living space as a marriage between travellers and their businesses.
In its first two weeks, the hostel has been home to eight customers. Construkt’s co-founder Karan Bahadur says that what makes them different from other living spaces is that they offer more than just living arrangements. “Apart from giving them an abode, we also help them to network, aiding them in making the right connections,” Karan explains. “Putting them through various workshops and accelerators, we provide the start-up audience a much-needed head start,” he continues.
Construkt is now in the process of expanding to other start-up spaces in the country like Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi. They are also looking into the prospects of adopting a ClassPass-like model, wherein customers would be allowed to room in different locations in the country, through a flat-rate subscription.