In this post
The short version
Ahmedabad has over 40 co-working spaces and counting. The professionals inside them, remote workers, startup founders, designers, consultants, drink coffee throughout the day. They are also, almost uniformly, being served coffee that does not belong in the same room as the work they are doing. Vending machine instant, chai from the pantry, or leave the building. None of these are good enough. P.S. is building the Pod format to fix this, specialty coffee inside the spaces where Ahmedabad's urban professionals actually work.
Key takeaways
Co-working professionals are Ahmedabad's most consistent daily coffee consumers: drinking 2–4 cups across a full workday, not just at breakfast.
The three current options, vending machine, in-house chai pantry, leaving the building, each fail on at least two of the three things this audience requires: quality, speed, and price.
A P.S. Pod inside a co-working space means zero travel time, app ordering, ₹89 per cup, 100% Arabica, and a barista-grade experience without breaking the flow of the work day.
Co-working spaces are the anchor location type for the P.S. Pod rollout in Ahmedabad, the footfall is captive, the repeat frequency is daily, and the demand signal is already there.
The P.S. Pass is built for this exact use case, prepaid, predictable, no friction per transaction. The co-working professional becomes the ideal pass holder.
The co-working coffee situation in Ahmedabad, as it stands
Ahmedabad's co-working market has grown fast. SaltCube, Regus, WeWork-style formats, and dozens of independent operators now serve the city's consultants, remote employees, startup teams, and freelancers. The infrastructure is genuinely good, fast WiFi, ergonomic seating, meeting rooms on demand, rooftop terraces. The coffee is not keeping pace with any of it.
Walk into most of these spaces and your options are: a vending machine dispensing instant powder in hot water, a chai pantry with UHT milk, or a Google Maps detour to the nearest cafe that may or may not be open and is almost certainly a 10-minute round trip. For a professional who is mid-meeting, on a deadline, or simply trying to stay focused, none of these are the answer.
This is not an Ahmedabad-specific failure. Co-working coffee is mediocre across India. But Ahmedabad is the city where we are starting, and the gap here is particularly sharp. The professionals inside these spaces are, in many cases, the most coffee-aware segment of the population. They have travelled, they drink specialty coffee when they visit Mumbai or Bengaluru, and they are paying ₹8,000–15,000 per desk per month for a premium workspace experience. The coffee is the one thing the space cannot seem to get right.
Why the co-working professional is Ahmedabad's most important coffee consumer
Coffee consumption follows a simple pattern in most settings: one cup at breakfast, maybe one in the afternoon. Co-working professionals break this pattern. Their workday is longer, more cognitively demanding, and less structured than an office environment with fixed breaks. They drink coffee to start the day, again during a 10am call, again after lunch when the focus dips, and sometimes once more before an evening deadline.
That is two to four cups a day, five days a week, every working week of the year. For a 300-person co-working space, that is a minimum of 600 cups on a conservative day, likely closer to 900 on a busy one. The demand is not theoretical. It is already happening. It is just being served by a machine that costs ₹15 per cup and produces something that tastes like it.
This is also an audience with very specific requirements. They need coffee fast: a 10-minute detour out of the building breaks a work session. They need it reliable: they are not experimenting with new cafes mid-week; they want the same good cup every day. And they need it reasonably priced: ₹320 for a latte at a specialty cafe adds up to ₹80,000 a year if consumed daily. That is not sustainable as a habit, which is why most end up at the vending machine by default.
Speed, quality, and price. Co-working professionals need all three simultaneously. Current options deliver at most one. The vending machine delivers none of them.
The three options that co-working spaces currently offer, and what is wrong with each
Option 1: The vending machine
The standard co-working space coffee solution. Pre-mixed Robusta powder, hot water, paper cup. Caffeine content is inconsistent. Flavour is bitter and flat. The machine breaks every few weeks and takes three days to get serviced. It is there because it is cheap to install and requires zero operational management. It has nothing to do with what the people inside the space actually want from coffee.
Option 2: The chai pantry
Some spaces have a staffed pantry offering chai, instant coffee, and UHT milk. This is better than the vending machine in terms of human involvement, but the output is broadly the same. The chai is fine, chai is hard to get wrong at scale. The coffee is not fine, because instant coffee made with UHT milk is not coffee in any meaningful sense. The pantry exists to check a box, not to serve the actual demand in the room.
Option 3: Leave the building
This is the de facto solution for anyone who actually cares about what they drink. Find the nearest specialty cafe, in Ahmedabad, that might be a 5–15 minute walk or drive depending on location, join the queue, order, wait, walk back. By the time you are back at your desk, 20 minutes of your workday has gone to getting a coffee. That is not a sustainable daily habit for anyone on a deadline.
| Option | Quality | Speed | Price | Daily habit? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vending machine | Poor, instant Robusta | Fast | ₹15–25 | Default, not chosen |
| Chai pantry | Poor, instant + UHT milk | Moderate | Free or ₹10–20 | Chai yes, coffee no |
| Leave the building | Good, if the cafe is good | Slow, 15–20 min trip | ₹250–350+ | Occasional, not daily |
| P.S. Pod (planned) | Specialty, 100% Arabica | Fast, app ordering | ₹89 | Built for daily use |
What a P.S. Pod inside a co-working space will actually look like
A P.S. Pod is 50–200 sq ft. It does not need a separate entrance, a dining floor, or a team of four baristas. It fits in the lobby, adjacent to the pantry, or near the reception, wherever the natural gathering and movement of the space already happens. The footprint is small enough that it does not compete with the co-working space's own square footage; it completes it.
The ordering model removes the friction that makes specialty coffee impractical mid-day. Open the app. Tap your usual order. The app tells you when it is ready. You pick it up on the way back from the bathroom, between two calls, or at the start of your afternoon block. There is no queue at a counter, no barista interaction required if you do not want it, no waiting around.
First cup on arrival. App order placed in the lift. Ready at the counter before the laptop is open.
Second cup between calls. 90 seconds total interaction. Back at the desk before the next meeting starts.
The 2pm focus dip, addressed with a cortado. No building exit required.
Evening push, specialty caffeine, ₹89. The co-working member who stays late becomes the repeat customer the Pass was built for.
The P.S. Pass makes this even more frictionless. A co-working professional who is in the same building five days a week does not want to think about paying each time. Buy 20 cups once. Tap to order. The transaction disappears into the background of the habit. This is the model abCoffee has proven works at scale, pre-sold cups drive daily return visits and convert casual drinkers into committed ones.
We are pre-Pod. No Pods are open yet. But the co-working space is the anchor location type for our Ahmedabad rollout, the footfall is captive, the repeat frequency is built into the nature of the space, and the demand is being met by a vending machine right now. That gap is the opportunity.
What ₹89 actually means for a daily co-working coffee habit
The maths on daily specialty coffee are rarely laid out honestly. Most people assume specialty coffee means ₹280–350 per cup and do the calculation quickly: that is ₹70,000–87,000 a year for one cup per day. The habit feels unsustainable before it begins.
At ₹89, the calculation changes entirely.
| Habit | Cost per cup | Annual cost (240 days) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 cup/day at P.S. | ₹89 | ₹21,360/year |
| 2 cups/day at P.S. | ₹89 each | ₹42,720/year |
| 1 cup/day, specialty cafe | ₹280–320 | ₹67,200–76,800/year |
| 2 cups/day, vending machine | ₹20 | ₹9,600/year (poor quality) |
One specialty espresso a day at P.S., for a full 240-day working year, costs ₹21,360. That is less than the annual cost of most Ahmedabad gym memberships. Two cups a day, the realistic average for a focused professional, is ₹42,720 a year, or about ₹3,560 per month. For the person paying ₹8,000–15,000 a month for a co-working desk, that is a reasonable line item for a habit that directly serves their productivity.
With the P.S. Pass, even that cost comes down. Prepaid cup bundles will be priced at a per-cup discount. The daily habit becomes cheaper the more consistently you build it, which is the opposite of how most premium habits work.
Frequently asked questions
Your Pod is coming to a co-working space near you.
We are building P.S. Coffee Pods inside the co-working spaces, gyms, and office buildings where Ahmedabad's professionals spend their days. Specialty espresso. App ordering. ₹89 per cup. No building exit required.
Pre-launch · Ahmedabad first · Newsletter updates when Pods open