In this post
The short version
Ahmedabad's co-working scene has grown fast. The professionals inside these spaces, 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, pantry chai, or leave the building. None of these are built for the job. P.S. is building the Pod format to fix this, specialty coffee in and around 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 pantry, leaving the building, each fail on at least two of the three things this audience requires: quality, speed, and consistency.
A P.S. Pod inside a co-working space means minimal travel time, app ordering and a specialty-grade cup 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 being built for exactly this use case, so the co-working professional does not have to think about each transaction.
The co-working coffee situation in Ahmedabad, as it stands
Ahmedabad's co-working market has grown fast. A mix of large branded operators and dozens of independent spaces 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 pantry with UHT milk, or a detour to the nearest cafe that may or may not be open and is almost certainly a round trip of ten minutes or more. 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 a premium for a serious workspace. 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, across every co-working space in the city. The demand is not theoretical. It is already happening. It is just being served by a vending machine.
This is also an audience with very specific requirements. They need coffee fast: a long 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 a specialty cafe habit, bought daily, adds up quickly enough that most people quietly give up on it and default back to the vending machine.
Speed, quality, and consistency. 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 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 coffee output is broadly the same, because instant coffee made with UHT milk is not coffee in any meaningful sense. The pantry covers chai well; it was never built to cover coffee.
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, join the queue, order, wait, walk back. By the time you are back at your desk, a meaningful chunk of your workday has gone to getting a coffee. That is not a sustainable daily habit for anyone on a deadline.
| Option | Quality | Speed | Daily habit? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vending machine | Poor, inconsistent | Fast | Default, not chosen |
| Pantry | Poor for coffee | Moderate | Chai yes, coffee no |
| Leave the building | Good, if the cafe is good | Slow, a real detour | Occasional, not daily |
| P.S. Pod (planned) | Specialty grade | Fast, app ordering | 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. The co-working member who stays late becomes the repeat customer the Pass is being built for.
The P.S. Pass is being designed to make this even more frictionless. A co-working professional who is in the same building five days a week should not have to think about paying each time. The transaction is meant to disappear into the background of the habit, so a pre-committed customer feels less like a transaction and more like a regular.
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.
More on what this looks like from the operator's side: coffee for co-working spaces.
Frequently asked questions
Your Pod is being planned for a co-working space near you.
We are building P.S. Coffee Pods in and around the co-working spaces, gyms, and office buildings where Ahmedabad's professionals spend their days. Specialty espresso. App ordering. No building exit required.
Pre-launch · Ahmedabad first · Newsletter updates when Pods open