Fixed-fee study that tells a firm how much office to keep before it renews
TL;DR Sizehold runs a six-to-eight-week study of how a firm really uses its office, timed for the months before a lease renewal or expansion. It reads data the firm already owns, adds a short sensor sample, and ends with one number - how many square feet to keep, give back or move to flex. The CFO pays a fixed fee.
Indian firms are signing big lease decisions on gut feel. In one big consultancy's 2025 survey of over 100 executives, 55% said their offices run above 75% utilisation and 72% expect to grow their portfolio by at least 10% within two years[1]. Those utilisation figures are self-reported though, not measured.
And the stakes keep rising. Prime Bengaluru rent reached ₹163 per sq ft a month in Q2 2026, up from ₹148 a year before[2]. At that rate a 50,000 sq ft office costs about ₹81 L a month, so a 10% error over a nine-year lease runs into crores.
Yet most firms with three office days a week have never counted how many desks are full on a Monday versus a Wednesday. Odd, when you think about the money involved.
Sizehold sells one product - a right-sizing study with a fixed scope, fee and end date. It starts 9–15 months before a lease event, while the firm still has options.
Weeks 1–2 pull what the firm already has, which is badge swipes, Wi-Fi logins and meeting-room bookings, cleaned and aggregated so no individual is tracked. Weeks 2–6 add a sample of camera-free sensors on two or three representative floors to check how far badge data overstates real desk use. Weeks 6–8 turn that into a peak-day model and a short board paper with three options (keep, shrink, shrink plus flex) and the rent each implies.
The seed asked for an analytics platform. I kept that core but sold it as a time-boxed decision, because a dashboard nobody opens after month three is the usual fate of this category. Firms that want ongoing tracking can keep the sensors on a subscription afterwards.
The CFO or head of real estate pays, usually at a GCC or a domestic firm of 300–3,000 seats. They already pay brokers and consultants around lease events, and one US occupancy vendor sells sensors at about ₹22,000 (US$229) each plus ₹240 (US$2.50) per desk a month[3]. My estimate is that a study prices at ₹8–25 L depending on floor area, since no Indian price list was found.
India leased a record 82.6 million sq ft of offices in 2025, with GCCs taking about 39% in the last quarter[4]. Many of those leases were signed in 2016–2019 and come up for renewal into hybrid working patterns their original plans never assumed. Rents are rising in the main cities[2], so guessing costs more than it used to.
There is no public figure for what Indian firms spend on occupancy studies. The narrow signal is the volume of decisions - 82.6 million sq ft leased in one year[4], and 72% of surveyed occupiers planning 10%+ growth[1].
Adjacent, an operator-commissioned report puts the flex market at US$3–4 bn, heading to US$9–10 bn by 2028[5]. Flex is one of the options a study would price, not your market.
US occupancy vendors offer sensors, software and advisory services[3]. Global workplace platforms sell scenario modelling and occupancy analytics inside a larger workplace platform[6]. In India, the big brokers run workplace strategy as part of a leasing mandate, which means the adviser gets paid more when the client takes more space. Funny how that works. The gap is an independent, fixed-fee study that has no stake in the answer.
| Difficulty | Moderate (38/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹45–80 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The analytics are not hard. Getting clean badge and Wi-Fi exports out of a client's IT team in week one is. The other hard part is credibility, because a CFO has to trust a young firm's number enough to put it in front of a board.
The study itself needs no sector licence. Data and sensor rules apply.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI with the final square-foot number on its own. A wrong call commits the firm to rent for years, so a person signs it.
Want to work out the AI layer for Sizehold? Talk to Yash →
I'd give this to a founder from corporate real estate, workplace consulting or a GCC facilities team who already knows the people who sign leases. If you're a pure software founder who wants recurring revenue from day one then look elsewhere. Prove one thing first - that three firms facing a lease event within a year will pay a fixed fee for an independent answer.
Plan for roughly ₹45–80 L, mostly for analysts, a pool of sensors and the first studies.
No sector licence. You need DPDP compliance for employee data, WPC approval for wireless sensors, and the usual company and GST registration.
Yes, lease renewals happen everywhere. Check local data protection law and radio equipment rules before placing sensors.
The free Sizehold validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the data-protection and radio checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for CFOs and real estate heads, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Sizehold or something close to it? The make-or-break work is winning the first three studies against brokers who offer advice for free, and that's a sales problem I enjoy chewing on. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.