‘Turned a property supervisor as an alternative of founder’: Gurgaon bizman warns how startups in India implode
When a Gurgaon founder signed a ₹50 lakh lease for a six-person startup nonetheless in beta, Brij Mall, a neighborhood businessman, noticed a cautionary story—not a culture-building win.
Writing on LinkedIn, Mall described how the founder justified the plush Gurgaon workplace as important for attracting expertise and shaping firm tradition. Mall wasn’t satisfied. “I practically choked on my tea, staring on the ‘Hustle Laborious’ poster he hadn’t lived as much as but,” he wrote.
He tried to intervene, taking the founder to a coworking area in Bengaluru, mentioning rows of empty desks. “That is your competitors’s graveyard,” Mall warned. However the founder signed the lease anyway—and ended up subletting the area a yr later after excessive burn and stalled progress. “Not as a result of the workplace was expensive… As a result of the choice was,” Mall added. “Ego is the largest expense on a founder’s steadiness sheet.”
In India’s present startup growth, that ego could be deadly. Regardless of sturdy funding flows and report new launches, over 90% of Indian startups nonetheless fail inside 5 years—many resulting from untimely scaling and poor monetary judgment. Lavish workplace leases are a repeat offender.
In line with current knowledge, startups now make up practically 19% of all main workplace leases in India’s largest cities, totaling over 24.8 million sq ft. Many founders equate swanky places of work with credibility, however this usually front-loads fastened bills lengthy earlier than income stabilizes.
Coworking areas, in the meantime, are gaining traction—now serving 60% of startup workplace wants—due to their flexibility and decrease burn. Consultants say the issue isn’t the workplace dimension, however timing: locking into long-term leases with small groups and unproven merchandise can derail a enterprise earlier than it finds its footing.
Rows of empty desks have change into a fixture in India’s startup ecosystem—testaments to founders who confused tradition with decor, and sign with substance.
