Walk around Bengaluru’s techy neighbourhoods long enough, and you would think there are only two kinds of offices—tall, gleaming skyscrapers that look imposing enough to shape the new world order, and quirky coworking spaces where a new startup seems to appear (and disappear) from a desk every day.

And then you walk into a Smartworks in Bellandur. 

Punching bags and boardrooms, cricket pitches and CFOs. The space feels like coworking—until the tenant list makes your left eyebrow twitch. Google, Accenture, Persistent Systems, EY, Tech Mahindra, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and even Starbucks–from where most employees in the building pick up their coffee. 

This is not a startup playground. This is enterprise real estate wearing athleisure.

In Q2 FY26, Smartworks brought in about Rs 425–441 crore in revenue and shrank its quarterly loss from Rs 15.8 crore to just Rs 3.1 crore. A sharp difference from Indiqube–newly listed, still in the red–and Awfis, which is growing, but with a considerable dip in profits.

Over the last three months, Smartworks, which has a market cap of Rs 6,581 crore, has had its stock climb roughly 25%, while Awfis has slipped about 4%, and Indiqube is barely above water at around 1–2%.  

Source: Trendlyne

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It could be unfair to compare the three because Smartworks isn’t competing in the same sport. While its peers chase startups and SMEs—segments getting hammered by the tech slowdown—Smartworks built for enterprises and GCCs from day one. Its model is basically office-as-a-service for companies with money, headcount, and zero patience for playing landlord. 

And nearly ten years after inception, the long bet is finally cashing its first real cheque. Today, the company serves over 760 corporate and enterprise clients, with around 90% of its rental revenue coming from large enterprises.

In the world of office spaces, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are companies that own income-generating commercial real estate. They don’t design cafés or manage operations. Think: office parks, warehouses, hotels–anything that pays rent. 

Coworking spaces, on the other hand, are the retail stores of office space. Operators take a huge floor (or floors), slice them into sections, and rent out the space—a desk here, a meeting room there. They throw in cafés, pool tables, maybe even kombucha taps for the vibe.