India’s first Pay-Per-Minute Cafe, The Habitation Cafe, is a place that charges for the time you spend there instead of other facilities, which are all covered in the charges for everyone. The first of its kind concept is completely new to the country and targets working professionals, freelancers, and students.
The concept is quite popular in Europe and due to the rise in remote workers & freelancers during the COVID 19 pandemic, there is a need for co-working spaces that can cater to their needs and provide workspaces for shorter durations.
The Habitation Cafe charges only ₹3 Per Minute for every individual, the beverages, food, AC & Wifi are all covered in the charges. The startup is being marketed as a time cafe, which focuses on replacing the regular coffee shops used by the remote workers to catch up on their work and end up paying a lot for the food & beverages. “We are trying to bring in the mindset to India that it is not customary to buy something every few minutes to use a workspace, we focus on the most important asset, time. Everything else should be free of cost so that no one is forced to make a purchase as a good gesture just to spend a few hours in cafes,” said Udit Budhiraja, the Co-Founder & CEO of Habitation Cafe. “The cafe has received an encouraging response from the students around our properties as well. The students who never got to experience college life due to the lockdowns have been regular visitors to our properties, to play games, study and hang out with their friends.” He added.
The Habitation Cafe has multiple board games and books to choose from for its customers. They also organize regular fun & learning events like open mics, discussions, and talks by industry leaders. They offer long-term plans like a day pass for ₹599, A 7-day pass for ₹1999 & a 30 day pass for ₹7999. The Cafe plans to expand rapidly in different parts of Delhi NCR & Bangalore in the coming month. Presently, they have 4 properties in Bangalore, Indirapuram, Noida & Panchkula.
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The concept has been receiving an impressive response in all the 4 cities they have opened up in. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, most of the corporates and colleges are still operating online, while some have introduced hybrid models where people can come in according to their preference, it creates a lot of confusion as every individual has a different time of convenience. During such an unforeseeable environment, Habitation Cafe has emerged as a solution to both remote workers tired of working from home and the professionals who need to physically meet their team for a short while to get their work done.
With many countries trying a 4 day work week model and others trying to permanently shift to a remote work setup, the world is trying to be more flexible in terms of how the companies are run, it is, therefore, a favorable opportunity for startups like Habitation Cafe which provide a more flexible system than the other co-working spaces & cafes. Their seven-day plan has the option to choose any 7 days in a given month and similarly the thirty-day plan with any 30 days in 6 months to choose from. Flexibility & ease of working from remote locations paying for only the time you actually spend is unquestionably the key to our near future.
