There are several creative ways to avoid paying huge rent and yet still enjoy all the major benefits that a well-organized physical office usually offers. If you are an entrepreneur in the city of Mumbai and running a startup with a small number of employees, then as an entrepreneur, you must certainly be able to recognize the significance of low operating expenses. The biggest fixed operating expense for most of the businesses is the rent for the office space.

However, in today’s world, there are several creative ways of avoiding the payment of huge rents and still afford to enjoy the benefits that any physical office has to offer. The virtual office facility helps a budding entrepreneur to continue the regular business operations without sparing any extra overhead. Mumbai is one of the major metropolitan cities in India and the cost of real estate is quite high and it becomes a burden for a budding entrepreneur to pay hefty bills of a personal office.

Here are 4 major reasons why a virtual office in Mumbai  beats working from home or a physical office:

• Improving the productivity of the employees

Most of the virtual offices run on the principle of worker performance rather than just the number of hours that is dedicated to the employees in the chair. This results into motivating the workers to be productive and efficient rather than just procrastinating while at work. When one works from a physical office or a home office, a lot of time has been spent in helping to keep all the employees engaged in their work.

When the employees take the onus of their own productivity, they can engineer their work schedules which will, in turn, help them in enhancing their productivity. The conventional nine-to-five work regimen may not be productive for everyone. Some people can be more productive if given flexible working hours. When you are focusing on the happiness and well-being of the employees, then you will witness that productivity will also show a great increase in the graph. If your worker still demands the access to some physical space on any occasion for some client meeting or some other purpose, then you may consider hiring an office space in a shared office flexibly on an hourly or daily basis.

• Much lesser office overhead

There is a lot of money that an entrepreneur spends in order to rent a private office. By opting for virtual office,  an entrepreneur can avoid paying office rent and utility bills that are a major overhead for operating a physical office. As a benefit of such savings,  the entrepreneur would have the bandwidth of providing better deals to their clients or be in a position to hire better talents for the welfare of the business. When the entrepreneur has the privilege of reducing the overall overhead, then he can afford to innovate across several other niches of the business. Thus, minimizing the costs can enable a professional to become efficient, productive and enhances the power of innovation.

• Lesser or nil costs of setting up an office

When an entrepreneur is running a conventional brick and mortar office, then there are several costs attached which happens to be incurred in a metropolitan city like Mumbai. The official setup and the costs of maintenance can be on a much higher side. For instance, one needs to purchase office supplies and desks for the complete office setup. Also, the office needs to be furnished, the kitchen needs to be stocked, the insurance premiums are to be paid and there are several other supplies which are required for the office for proper functioning. This, when calculated, becomes a huge investment. Also, there are equipment replacement and monthly maintenance costs which the entrepreneur eventually incurs. By opting for a virtual office, the entrepreneur will be able to have his employees operating from home or a shared office that are available in fully furnished form.

• Enhancing the office flexibility and enjoying local SEO benefits

If you are opting for some virtual office, then you are providing your employees with ultimate flexibility. This specifically enables the employees to choose their work timings of the day in which they perform most productively. Most of the modern day companies who allow their employees to work from a remote location have a mandate for dedicated hours every working day but this does not mean that the employees have to stick to their computers the whole day. This facilitates the much desired work-life balance for all the employees. Some of the virtual offices in Mumbai also offer actual office settings that the employees can work whenever required once in awhile. These companies have amenities like office supplies, meeting rooms, desks, lounge spaces and pantry facilities. In several of them, receptionist facilities are being provided which invariably adds an edge to the level of professionalism for your startup.

While you opt for some virtual office, you will have the opportunity of claiming a location for the startup even without having an actual physical setting of your business there. This can prove to be highly beneficial for the purposes of local SEO. In case, you aspire your startup to rank for local search but do not possess a specific physical location, then opting for some virtual office would provide you with a prestigious business address and a phone number.

So, no matter whether you have launched your startup or running a small business and is looking forward to reducing your fixed monthly overhead without sacrificing the advantages of owning a privately held office, then it is certainly worth looking for a shared or a virtual office space in a progressive city like Mumbai.