Four Things to Consider When Deciding a Perfect Location for Your Startup Finding the right location is one of the most critical factors that can determine the potential success of your business.
By Nidhi Singh
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Launching a startup involves a list of steps like planning, marketing research, raising capital and nailing down an ideal location for starting the business. Finding the right location is one of the most critical factors that can determine the potential success of the business.Should I set up my office in a city or a small town? Many entrepreneurs often face confusion as to what things one must consider when hunting the perfect office space for their startup. Entrepreneur India lists down few key factors that entrepreneurs must not overlook before establishing their startup office at a specific location.
Reach Of Target Audience:
For any tech start up some of the cliche things needed are the location and obviously associated comforts like inundated supply of human resource, great work place and good circle of supporting businesses like legal, company secretary, accounting, cloud services and so on. However, one also needs to really rethink and look at start up location from business success point of view.
For Narayan Lal, Founder and CEO,Brongo, a perfect start up location is where end users for his product/service are available in abundance and are easy to reach.
"This gives better chances for business to succeed and post which we can always workout on the location to attract better talent," he said.
Do Some Research:
It is really important to choose a right location for operating a business. Pankaj Agarwal, Co-founder & MD, Just Organik shared being a start-up, it is critical to do a proper research about the rent, utility bills and taxes in the area considered to open an office. Also, it is important to also decide if one wants to be closer to the source or the market.
"With this, hidden cost such as parking area charges and maintenance should also be taken into consideration before deciding on the place. It is also important that we choose a safe place so that we don't need to spend extra on the private security. As our growth is very much dependant on the skill of our staff, it is must to have an office in the area where skilled work force is available," said Agarwal.
Think About a Co-working Space:
While we all know due to 24*7 connectivity one can locate anywhere but it is still important to consider few things before setting up a startup office.
According to Trishla Surana, Co-founder, Colour Me Mad, there are a lot of co-working spaces available in India which allows start ups to keep costs low and a great opportunity to network with other entrepreneurs and potential end users for their product or service. On the basis of this, one can choose a co-working space as per their budget, proximity to customers or sheer convenience for team members to travel to their work place.
"If you have a technology based start up then you can also consider research labs run by Govt. or not for profit organisations so that you will have access to research set up and expertise which is most important for your start up to succeed," said Surana
Be Closer to Manufacturing Base:
Synergies play a very important role while deciding the location of a start-up along with the kind of start-up it is. A tech start-up might have a higher chance of success when in Silicon Valley as it becomes easy for them to get competent, motivated people on board and for investors to believe in them.
Shubhika Jain, Founder, RAS Luxury Oils believes for a start-up which is involved in developing products, it always makes sense to first be located near its manufacturing hub so that the product quality is excellent and then slowly have a marketing office in a major city.
" Taking my own example, RAS Luxury Oils office is based out of Raipur, Chhattisgarh because the cultivation of herbs, extraction of oil and other raw materials, formulation and manufacturing, packaging of the final product, all happens here. Additionally, keeping focus on the product is very important for a start-up because any marketing will not work in the long term unless the product is good," said Jain.