Closes whole office floors on quiet days and banks the power and upkeep savings
TL;DR Squarewise helps hybrid offices close whole floors on low-attendance days. It forecasts each day's headcount from booking and badge data, moves teams onto fewer floors, and tells the building system to switch off cooling and lights on the empty ones. Facilities heads pay from the power and housekeeping savings.
Hybrid attendance is uneven across the week, but offices run every floor at full cooling and lighting every day. In the best-measured market, badge data puts the busiest day at 65.5% of the pre-pandemic baseline against a weekly average of 55.4%[1], so the quiet days are much quieter than the peak. Indian firms with anchor days see a similar shape, though I found no published Indian figure.
Cooling is usually a large share of an office power bill (my assumption, so check your own meters), and peak electricity demand keeps setting records - the grid met 250 GW on 30 May 2024[2]. Paying to cool a floor with four people on it, on a Monday in May, is money down the drain. Housekeeping and security still cover every floor too.
The seed pitched always-on dynamic space optimisation. Desk booking, lease studies and post-move tuning are covered by sibling ideas in this directory, so I narrowed it to one action that saves money every week - closing floors when attendance is low.
Squarewise reads the next week's desk bookings, past badge swipes and team calendars, and forecasts headcount for each day. Where attendance will fit on fewer floors, it proposes a "quiet-day plan" that says which teams sit where and which floors close. Staff see the plan in the booking tool a few days ahead. On the day, it sends schedules to the building management system to set back cooling, lights and ventilation on closed floors, and tells housekeeping which floors to skip.
Each month the client gets a report on floors closed, power saved against a metered baseline, and any days when the forecast was wrong.
The buyer is the facilities or real-estate head at a company occupying three or more floors, often a GCC or services firm. Savings come from the electricity bill and housekeeping contracts, so pricing can be a fixed monthly fee per floor or a share of measured savings. Sensor vendors abroad charge per device and per desk each month[3], which sets a reference point.
India hosted about 1,700 GCCs employing roughly 1.9 million people in 2025[4], most in multi-floor offices with modern building systems that accept schedules. Time-of-day tariffs, which from April 2024 charge commercial users 10–20% more at peak hours[5], make every switched-off hour more valuable.
I found no public figure for spending on hybrid-office energy optimisation in India. The base is concrete though - a single listed REIT runs 52.5 million sq ft across 14 office parks for 285 occupiers[6]. On the adjacent side, US occupancy data showing quiet days well below peak[1] explains why occupancy-planning products sell abroad[3].
Global occupancy-sensor vendors sell counting sensors, occupancy analytics and workplace planning, with published per-sensor prices[3]. Building management vendors offer scheduling but do not decide which floors to close. Desk-booking tools record bookings but stop short of the building system. The gap is software that turns attendance into a floor plan and a switch-off schedule, then proves the saving.
| Difficulty | Moderate (40/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹70 L–1.25 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
Connecting to building management systems is the slowest part, because each building runs different controllers and the landlord often manages them. Staff may also grumble about moving desks on quiet days, so team leads need a say in the plan. Savings have to be measured carefully or clients simply won't believe them.
No sector licence covers floor planning software. What you do need is permission to touch the building.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI send commands to building systems unchecked, and never near anything tied to fire or safety. A person signs off on every schedule.
Want to work out the AI layer for Squarewise? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I like this as a practical idea for a founder with facilities, building-automation or energy-services experience. If you can't get your hands on building systems then it won't work for you. Prove first that one client with three or more floors can close at least one floor on two days a week, and that metered power falls as a result.
Plan for roughly ₹70 L–1.25 Cr, most of it on integrations with building systems, a small engineering team and the first pilots.
No sector licence. You need company registration, GST, DPDP compliance for staff data, WPC approval for any radio sensors and written landlord consent before changing building schedules.
Yes. Low attendance on some weekdays is common wherever hybrid work stuck. Check local data protection law, radio equipment rules and how leases split control of building systems.
The free Squarewise validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the building-system and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for facilities heads and landlords, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Squarewise or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting landlords to let you schedule cooling floor by floor. 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.