This is the first blog so it makes sense to start right at the beginning. Why did we start Golden Square?
The plan was hatched in 1994. I had decided to become an Entrepreneur and looking for good ideas.
Someone suggested why not a Business Centre? The idea appealed to me. India was just opening up, after 1991 the wind of liberalization started blowing in the country. Just a few years back IBM had come back to India, there was a lot of new business activity likely to happen. However, starting a new company in India was still not so easy. Just getting a new telephone connection used to take 6 months and that was considered fast. So the idea that we could make it easy for companies to get started in Bangalore appealed to me. There was a definite need.
We were not the Pioneers in the Market. DBS was an established player. There were several others like Pan Asia Business Centre and Executive Chambers in the Market. So we set out to do a Market Research. There was this one incident which was a defining moment for Golden Square. I had just visited a well known Business Centre and as I was leaving I saw a customer, a foreigner, rush out of the reception. As I went out I saw this customer go to a Telephone Booth and I saw him make a call from there. Long distance Calls (STD and ISD) calls used to be very expensive these days, and this gentleman obviously was trying to save money not willing to pay the charges of the Business Centre.
This did not make sense to me. Was the business center not supposed to be like an office? If so should one not feel comfortable making a phone call from one's own office? This is when we decided that in Golden Square our customers should never feel like going outside to avail of any service. Our pricing will be such that it makes long term business sense for small teams to use Golden Square as their regular office.
This is the big differentiator of Golden Square. While most Business Centres price their services as if they were Hotels, thinking of their customers as being there for the short term. In Golden Square, we believe a customer is for life. We have designed and priced our services so that it makes sense for a small team.
No wonder we have customers who have been with us for more than 15 years almost since the beginning. The only reason customers move out is when their team size grows more than 10. That is when it makes economic sense to set up their own office facility.
The plan was hatched in 1994. I had decided to become an Entrepreneur and looking for good ideas.
Someone suggested why not a Business Centre? The idea appealed to me. India was just opening up, after 1991 the wind of liberalization started blowing in the country. Just a few years back IBM had come back to India, there was a lot of new business activity likely to happen. However, starting a new company in India was still not so easy. Just getting a new telephone connection used to take 6 months and that was considered fast. So the idea that we could make it easy for companies to get started in Bangalore appealed to me. There was a definite need.
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| The 1st Unit of Golden Square at Vittal Mallya Rd. Bangalore. |
We were not the Pioneers in the Market. DBS was an established player. There were several others like Pan Asia Business Centre and Executive Chambers in the Market. So we set out to do a Market Research. There was this one incident which was a defining moment for Golden Square. I had just visited a well known Business Centre and as I was leaving I saw a customer, a foreigner, rush out of the reception. As I went out I saw this customer go to a Telephone Booth and I saw him make a call from there. Long distance Calls (STD and ISD) calls used to be very expensive these days, and this gentleman obviously was trying to save money not willing to pay the charges of the Business Centre.
This did not make sense to me. Was the business center not supposed to be like an office? If so should one not feel comfortable making a phone call from one's own office? This is when we decided that in Golden Square our customers should never feel like going outside to avail of any service. Our pricing will be such that it makes long term business sense for small teams to use Golden Square as their regular office.
This is the big differentiator of Golden Square. While most Business Centres price their services as if they were Hotels, thinking of their customers as being there for the short term. In Golden Square, we believe a customer is for life. We have designed and priced our services so that it makes sense for a small team.
No wonder we have customers who have been with us for more than 15 years almost since the beginning. The only reason customers move out is when their team size grows more than 10. That is when it makes economic sense to set up their own office facility.
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