It was 2017 and I was still attempting to learn the ropes of being an independent writer and photographer. The idea of working from home amidst the incessant doorbells, familial interruptions and procrastination tactics were challenging to navigate through, at a time when #WFH wasn’t a popular hashtag or acronym yet.
While trying to maintain a writing schedule one afternoon, I received an email from WeWork, “a commercial real estate company that provided flexible shared workspaces for start-ups and services for other enterprises.” Founded in 2010—with their first branch established in New York City—the co-working space provider was unveiling their second community workspace in India, in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC). The news was accompanied by an invitation to participate in a month-long incubator programme for creative professionals, presumably as a trial to gauge the market and create a buzz about the fairly new phenomenon of a flexible working environment.
Cut to the Covid-19-pandemic era: WeWork Global lost $2.1 billion in the first quarter of FY21, and dissolved 100 of its underperforming centres due to the overwhelming effects of the coronavirus. These happenings, followed by a settlement with the ousted co-founder Adam Neumann, have been dramatised in the television series WeCrashed (2022), starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathway.