The New Office Metric Isn’t Headcount. It’s Seat Utilisation

India’s office market is expanding at a time when companies are becoming more cautious about how much of that space they actually use. AI is now giving occupiers a way to close that gap by analysing where employees sit, when they come in, which rooms they use and which parts of an office remain empty.

India’s office sector recorded a record 83.3 million square feet of gross leasing in 2025, while net absorption reached 57 million square feet, according to JLL. Flexible workspace operators accounted for 21.5% of full-year leasing, with their share rising to 26.6% in the fourth quarter.

The momentum has continued into 2026. India recorded 45.5 million square feet of office absorption in the first half of the year, the highest H1 figure on record, according to CBRE. GCCs accounted for about 19.6 million square feet, or 43% of H1 leasing, while flexible workspace operators took a 27% share in Q2.

At WeWork India, AI and spatial analytics are being used to understand how efficiently that space is being used.

WeWork India’s enterprise client base includes Turner International, Gameberry Labs, Chargebee and Aptia Group, among others. Its customer mix is led by technology companies at 27.6%, followed by BFSI at 17%, professional services at 11.6% and media at 7.9%, according to the company.

Rupesh Kumar, Chief Product & Technology Officer at WeWork India, tells AIM that the company uses machine-learning models across RE-Scout, Primo and SQ-Mix to make real-estate decisions. The tools help determine whether WeWork should take up a particular building, whether it should expand within an existing one and what mix of office sizes, or SKUs, it should create.

The decision is made well before a building is occupied. WeWork typically has a 12- to 16-month window before a new facility is ready, making the initial configuration critical to how quickly the building can reach its targeted occupancy and profitability. The demand comes from a broad enterprise base. At WeWork India, technology companies account for 27.6% of its business, followed by BFSI at 17%, professional services at 11.6% and media at 7.9%.

But the company is also using AI to understand what happens after people enter the building.

WeWork India’s workplace portfolio includes WeWork Workplace, its SaaS platform for managing enterprise real estate, alongside On Demand and All Access for flexible workspace. Its AI-led tools help optimise building selection, expansion and seating mix. Its spatial analytics systems use camera and sensor feeds to understand how spaces are being used, including which areas see activity and at what times of the day. Those insights can then influence changes to existing offices as well as the design of new ones.

One example illustrates how specific that optimisation can get. WeWork found that its ‘Nook’ spaces—areas designed for people to sit, chat and interact informally—were not being used sufficiently. The company converted them into regular seating.

In another instance, it found that certain open areas were being used heavily during lunchtime but remained relatively underused at other times. Instead of leaving the space idle outside lunch hours, WeWork remodelled it so that it could function as a workstation during other parts of the day and serve a different purpose during lunchtime.

The company has also used utilisation patterns to remodel restrooms and has taken these learnings into the design of newer facilities. That shift in workplace design is that a space no longer has to be permanently assigned to a single function.

This is particularly relevant as hybrid work makes employee attendance less predictable. A company with 1,000 employees may not have 1,000 people in its office on a given day. Some teams may come in on Tuesday and Wednesday, while others arrive later in the week. Meeting rooms may be heavily booked on certain days while individual desks remain vacant.

That creates a mismatch between headcount and actual space demand. AI can help companies measure that mismatch instead of relying entirely on surveys, historical assumptions or fixed ratios.

WeWork is already taking these insights to its customers. Kumar said the company provides member companies with information on which days employees come into the office, peak utilisation, meeting-room usage and how much time employees spend in meetings or collaboration. Such information can help companies make better real-estate decisions.

For large enterprises and GCCs, the economics can become significant. GCCs leased 31.4 million square feet in India in 2025, accounting for 37.7% of gross leasing activity, according to JLL. Nearly 200 new GCCs have entered India over the past two years, with JLL saying GCCs now account for roughly half of active space requirements.

At that scale, improving utilisation is not simply a workplace-comfort exercise. It can influence how much real estate a company leases, how it configures its floors and whether it needs additional capacity.

Deepak Chhabria, President of RMZ Infrastructure, described the emerging model as “ecosystems for humans to operate within.”

Chhabria also pointed to the growing importance of social spaces. According to him, social spaces and experiences now account for as much as 10% of an ecosystem in some GCC developments, compared with less than 1% around 25 years ago.

That makes the optimisation problem more complicated than simply calculating the number of available seats. Companies need to determine how much space should be dedicated to individual work, collaboration, meetings, social interaction and other workplace functions—and how those requirements change throughout the day.

India’s flexible workspace sector is already evolving around this need. CBRE describes flex as increasingly becoming a core portfolio lever for occupiers, helping companies manage scalability, standardisation and operational outsourcing rather than simply serving as a cheaper alternative to traditional leases.

The market’s growth reflects that shift. In Q1 2026, flexible workspace operators accounted for 25.9% of India’s gross office leasing, according to JLL. The segment leased 5.56 million square feet across India’s top seven cities during the quarter.

AI adds another layer: the ability to keep learning from the workplace it has built.

That could eventually change how office buildings are designed from the beginning. Instead of treating occupancy as a number checked periodically, companies can treat it as a live data stream—one that reveals which floors are busy, which meeting rooms are overbooked, which desks remain untouched and which spaces change function throughout the day.