Delhi vs. Bengaluru vs. Hyderabad: Who’s leading India’s coworking race? 

The real question in India’s Flex market isn’t who’s leading today, but which city is building the most future-ready ecosystem. While Bengaluru continues to anchor the country’s  Flex landscape with a 31% share of the overall market, Hyderabad and Delhi are fast emerging as distinct power centres, each representing a different phase of India’s workplace evolution— scale, maturity, and speed.

According to the India Flex Pulse Report 2025, Bengaluru currently leads the country with 799 Flex office centres operated by 272 unique workspace brands. Hyderabad follows with 304 centres and 171 operators, while Delhi (excluding the wider NCR) hosts 235 centres and 163 operators. These numbers reveal a rapidly diversifying landscape where no single city dominates every metric — instead, each has carved its own identity in how Flex is built, adopted, and scaled.

Bengaluru: Setting the benchmark

Bengaluru remains the undisputed hub of India’s Flex ecosystem. Its position is driven by a combination of deep technology talent, early multinational investment, and the city’s evolution into a global operations base rather than a secondary satellite location. The result is a market dominated by Grade-A/A+ Flex spaces, supported by a highly competitive network of operators that has raised the bar for workplace design, compliance, and hospitality-led service. Growing competition in the city has sharpened quality and innovation, pushing Flex  Workspace Operators to go beyond simple plug-and-play models toward integrated, experience-driven environments that offer a hospitality-style workplace experience.

In Bengaluru, Managed Offices workspaces are not seen as short-term fixes but as a strategic real estate pillar that balances scalability, compliance, and employee experience. The city continues to demonstrate how Flex can be embedded into long-term portfolio strategies, setting the operational template that many other Indian metros now follow.

Delhi–NCR: Compliance and connectivity

While Bengaluru drives the Flex maturity curve, NCR has become India’s most lucrative compliance-first market — where corporates treat Managed Offices as a governance-plus-productivity solution rather than a convenience.  BFSI, Consulting, and Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have become the primary demand drivers, seeking spaces that align with global standards on governance and operational control. 

The region’s strength lies in its multi-nodal structure. Each sub-market has evolved to serve a specific enterprise need. Gurugram caters to corporate headquarters and large multinational offices requiring Grade-A, policy-aligned office setups. Noida attracts IT and service-sector scale-ups looking for cost-efficient, growth-ready options. Delhi, with its centrality and proximity to government institutions, serves boutique consultancies and policy-linked organisations. This distributed growth pattern enables NCR to support a wide range of occupiers, from Startups to Fortune 500 companies across varied compliance and budget profiles. Upcoming infrastructure projects such as the Dwarka Expressway and Jewar Airport are expected to expand the region’s commercial corridors, unlocking new sub-city locations for Flex operators.

What sets NCR apart today is that Flex decisions are no longer made at the admin level—they’re made in the boardroom. For most Enterprises, the shift to Managed Offices is driven by governance standards, productivity expectations, and clear risk frameworks. Flex has moved from being a cost decision to becoming a core part of long-term real-estate planning.

Hyderabad: The next wave

Hyderabad’s ascent in the Flex space sector reflects the city’s reputation for speed, scalability, and value. Its Flex market, though smaller in absolute size, is expanding faster than any other metro in the country. The city offers a Grade-A-heavy office stock and highly competitive rentals, creating a compelling cost-to-capability ratio for enterprises. This has encouraged both global and domestic occupiers to establish or expand operations in Hyderabad, particularly in technology and engineering.

Several structural strengths underpin this growth. Hyderabad benefits from a deep engineering talent pool with relatively low attrition, a pro-business state government facilitating real estate development, and a steady supply pipeline that ensures availability without price escalation. Together, these factors allow operators and enterprises to scale quickly while maintaining quality and cost efficiency.

This blend of affordability and quality has made Hyderabad a preferred base for many GCCs, which often use Flex Offices as an initial platform before committing to larger footprints. The city’s growth trajectory suggests that its share of India’s Flex market will continue to rise sharply in the near term.

The road ahead

The evolution of India’s Flex landscape no longer revolves around a single dominant city. Instead, it is shaped by a tri-city dynamic in which Bengaluru, NCR, and Hyderabad play complementary roles in defining the country’s Flex future. Bengaluru will remain the innovation nucleus, setting standards for design, enterprise integration, and operator maturity. Delhi–NCR will continue to lead on governance and compliance, developing as India’s most institutionalised and multi-nodal Flex market.

Hyderabad is positioned to be the fastest-growing hub for GCCs, balancing affordability with Premium quality. As demand for agile, scalable offices continues to rise, the strength of India’s Flex ecosystem will depend not on competition among its cities, but on how effectively their distinct models reinforce one another.

The autor is the CEO and Co-Founder, myHQ by ANAROCK