The Catch Behind India’s Co-Living Boom
5 Sept 2025 6:20 AM IST
Description: Finding a home on rent is challenging. Many landlords have arbitrary rules. They say they’ll only rent to couples or families, or people with certain jobs. Staying in PGs or hostels is cost-effective, but for women, it can come with strict deadlines or unnecessary moral policing.
As more young people move to cities to study and work, they need housing. Enter: co-living spaces. These are shared living environments, where a professional company manages your daily chores, housekeeping and even cooking for you.
Reports say that the co-living market in India was worth 4,000 crore rupees in May 2025. And that it will grow by 5 times by 2030, and will be worth 20,600 crore rupees.
What’s the rage behind co-living? Why are people opting for these spaces versus living with flatmates or living in a PG? Find out more in the latest episode of The Signal Daily.
The Core produces The Signal Daily. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts. To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.
NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at [email protected].
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TRANSCRIPT
Kudrat (Host): Shibani is 28 and works as an analyst at Deloitte in Hyderabad. Before her current gig, she studied and later worked in the UK. She said that when she moved to India, she didn’t have the time to look for flatmates. So, she decided to stay at a co-living property called Buzz Quarter in Hyderabad.
Shibani: But one of my friends recommended co-living and, uh, I had to move to Hyderabad on very short notice, so I didn't really have an option.
So I was looking at options like service apartments where I wouldn't have to do a lot. Things are just taken care of for me. Yeah. And, uh, that's when I came across that. Okay. Originally, I had thought that I would be staying here for about a month or two until I found something that's a little more permanent.
Yeah. But it's been a year and a half and I'm still here very happily.
Kudrat (Host): Shibani said that she pays 28,000 rupees for her room and private bathroom. Her monthly rent also includes electricity charges, a daily housekeeping service, a television, as well as access to shared laundry, and a gym. Though the rooms don’t have an attached kitchen, for an extra 7 to 15,000 rupees, the residents of Buzz Quarter can eat fresh, home-cooked meals in their shared dining room.
According to a Colliers India report from May 2025, the co-living market in India is worth 4,000 crore rupees. The report also predicts that this space will grow 5 times by 2030, and will be worth 20,600 crore rupees then.
Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Daily. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.
In this episode, we’ll delve into co-living spaces. What’s the rage behind co-living? How are these spaces different from traditional PGs or a living arrangement with flatmates?
Kudrat (Host): Finding a home that you love on rent isn’t easy. It’s also expensive. According to data from NoBroker.in, a real estate service that helps people find housing sans brokers, rents in major Indian cities increased by 35-80% between 2020 to 2024. Staying in PGs or hostels is cost-effective, but for women, it can come with strict deadlines or unnecessary moral policing.
The Signal Daily covered rising rents recently, I’ll link the episode in the show notes below. We found that people thought the search process was taxing and frustrating. They saw several unclean homes that were tiny but charged thousands of rupees in rent. Landlords are picky – they didn’t want to rent out to single men or women. Some landlords even explicitly say that they’d only rent their space to people in corporate jobs. Other people talked of landlords asking for security deposits worth 6 months of rent. One person said he even had to pay a security deposit each year that he re-signed his lease, with the same house owner.
The troubles don’t end once you find a home. Let’s say you sign a lease. You move in, set up your furniture, pay all the upfront costs. Then comes maintenance. Every day, you have to clean your home: sweep, mop, and dust surfaces. You could hire domestic help, but you’d have to shell out another couple of thousand rupees from your pocket each month. And then of course, things come up too. Maybe a fan stops working one week, or your fridge leaks, or your AC gives up in the infamously hot Indian summers.
Now, imagine an alternative. A facility that’s fully-furnished and ready-to-move-in. The company has already provided you with a bed, bedding, television, curtains and even towels. In addition to a daily housekeeping service. Moreover, you aren’t alone. You live with tens of others like you in the same building. There are also common spaces to hang out in – a carrom board room, a table tennis room. Some co-living spaces have kitchens where you can cook your own food, and some, like Shibani’s, have an in-house chef who makes home-cooked meals for residents. Shibani said that she loves the community aspect of co-living spaces.
Shibani: You meet so many people. It's called a very diverse community. There are people from various backgrounds, various professional careers doing different kinds of things. For example, I've got friends who are like 45, 50 years old, and I'm 28 myself, and I get to interact with Gen Z, who will be 22, right?
So we, we all like some eight, ten of us, go play badminton or pickleball. Yeah. Every Saturday or Sunday. Yeah. There are lots of small groups in a place like this.
There are people who I know who are into reading books a lot. Yeah. So they've been thinking about creating a book club. Yeah. There are people, they're athletes, they're cyclists, they're people who run marathons. So they've got their running groups in the morning. There are walking groups that people have created.
So there's something or the other for everybody.
Kudrat (Host): If you live in the co-living space, you can mingle with people of various ages, and find those who might have the same hobbies as you. Adult women like Shibani also don’t have to worry about people questioning her decision to come home late one night; guests can do as they please.
Also, co-living spaces are convenient, no haggling with landlords or maids, everything is set up for you.
The Signal Daily spoke to Moonis Ali, the co-founder of Living Quarter. That’s the company that runs Buzz Quarter, where Shibani is currently staying. He said that consumers are drawn to co-living because of the community aspect and also because these spaces are convenient.
Moonis: Number one, what co-living spaces are now offering is convenience.
Okay. And, uh, convenience is an important part, which, you know, you can walk in with your bags, you can just, uh, you can kind of like, uh, walk out with your bags. It's as simple as that. Uh, second thing is I think, uh, we've moved into an era where everything is corporate, where even your landlords should be corporate.
Well, that way it's, it's a little bit more professional. People face a lot of problems with landlords. Landlords are unethical. They can chuck you out. They don't really refund your deposits back. So when you're dealing with a brand that has a certain credibility in the space that you want, I think that works a lot better.
Kudrat (Host): What consumers like about co-living spaces is that companies formalize the renting process. Unlike traditional renting, where landlords could promise many things but deliver on little, there’s more accountability with co-living. If something isn’t up to the mark, you can make a complaint or leave a bad review; like how hotels work.
The lack of professionalism is a major problem in the Indian rental housing market.
In 2021, the Indian government passed the Model Tenancy Act, which tried to tackle these issues. The law stipulated that the landlord and tenant must sign a mandatory tenancy agreement within two months of signing. It also placed a cap on how much security deposit landlords could ask – two months’ rent for residential properties. In addition, it required landlords to issue a notice of at least 3 months before hiking rents.
Though regulation exists, the government hasn’t been able to implement it well. That’s in part because land, housing and rent control come under the purview of states and not the central government.
The Signal Daily reached out to Colliers, the management company that published the co-living report I mentioned earlier. Its National Director and Head of Research, Vimal Nadar, wrote in an email that the Model Tenancy Act “has fallen short of expectations and implementation at the ground level. Furthermore, uneven adoption and varying interpretation across different states has hindered the establishment of a uniform regulatory framework. Inadequate provisions for dispute resolution and anti-discrimination measures add to the frailty of the act.”
Kudrat (Host): Vimal Nadar added that he sees this sector expanding. As more working professionals migrate to cities like Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Gurugram, they’re looking for such seamless living environments where they can hang out and learn from others too.
But all is not well even in co-living land. For now, these services are more expensive than what you’d pay if you were getting your own place. That’s also what Shibani and Commander Vineet Arora, who also lived at Buzz Quarter, said.
Shibani: Realistically, this is a little expensive versus getting a place of your own.
At least in Hyderabad co-living, it averages anywhere between 23 to, it can go up to 33, 34. I know some places which are for 45 as well. No, it really varies. This property does not include food in the rent. Okay. There's just your room costs.
Vineet: Let's say two of us are staying in a, you know, flat, we have rented out a flat 2 BHK. So even if we divide the cost amongst us, right, it would still be more economical in the longer run. And again, I'm emphasizing the longer run because you will have to either buy your furniture, rent out your furniture, and stuff like that, right?
A co-living only provides you that, but in the longer run, the flat will make more sense because you have that extra space. You know, you have your drawing room, you have your balconies, you have your, uh, private space to party in, in your house, to have your relatives coming over. That unfortunately will not be there in the co-living.
It's just your room.
Kudrat (Host): Moonis, the founder of Living Quarter, said he’s aware that co-living companies need to make their services more affordable. He said that right now, India’s regulatory environment hasn’t made space for co-living companies to flourish.
Moonis: If you look at a mature market, like the UK is the most mature market in co-living right now, globally. So, you know, they have a proper established governance system.
And a policy system that has, uh, put everything in. So right from the development, the density of people in a building, what employment can bring in local areas.
So if we were to take some pointers, there are a few more things that need to come into existence. In the last five years, what I've seen is the local police authorities have started taking a lot of measures in terms of creating safety for people that are living in these spaces. There are some SOPs that are coming into place, but still, there's a long way to go.
You know, right from the water departments, the electricity departments, the local municipality departments, they all need to come together and create a policy, right, that can make this work. And then when these policies start coming into the picture, then the places will actually become a lot more affordable to stay.
Kudrat (Host): Co-living spaces are still trying to solve the affordability piece of the puzzle.
But, as Moonis said, approval procedures and zonal laws differ across states. Co-living is still a growing segment and right now, there aren’t clear, established SOPs for how these spaces should function.
Having clear policies would be helpful to consumers in another way. Lately, traditional PGs have begun advertising themselves as co-living spaces too. The Signal Daily visited one such place in South Delhi. On Google Maps, the company appeared very much in line with the ethos of, say, a Buzz Quarter – it had community spaces, game rooms and so on.
But, when I actually visited it and spoke to the owner, I realized it was basically a traditional PG. The space was only meant for females, and the guests were all college-age students. They didn’t have a kitchen – they had all booked a tiffin service. And, 4-5 of them shared a room, which had bunk beds.
Moonis said that this false marketing is a growing problem. As co-living becomes more hip, everyone wants to capitalise on this trend.
Moonis: There were PG hostels and girls’ hostels and men's hostels now calling themselves co-living.
That's another misconception in the space, the way I see it. When you talk about co-living, when you talk about “co” specifically. For me, "co" means community. It means shared living.
So it's shared living, shared experiences.
But part of what has happened is a lot of these operators have come in calling themselves co-living. So what it has done is kind of even discouraged certain people to look at co-living as an option because it's created a negative connotation.
It's given a negative kind of association to co-living, because co-living doesn't necessarily mean a hostel. So sometimes people might want to stay in a co-living space, but then they see a co-living space and say, okay, there are three or four beds in a room, so this is a hostel. Like, you know, I don't want to live here.
So it's kind of driving some people away from the space, which isn't a good thing. I think companies now need to define themselves in a more curated way for themselves, which is what we are trying to do right now. We’re trying to reposition ourselves and see if co-living really is the term to be associated with.
Kudrat (Host): For now, co-living remains a niche but growing segment in India’s rental market. It’s drawing in young professionals like Shibani, who value convenience and community over price per square footage. But unless regulations catch up, affordability improves, and co-living spaces clearly distinguish themselves from traditional PGs, it could remain more hype than a real housing solution.
Kudrat (Host): That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Daily. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Daily. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.
To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.
If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at [email protected] or you can write to me personally at [email protected].
Thank you for listening.
