Mentorship Programs and Startup Support at Hub and Oak: What Every Founder Should Know

Quick Answer: Startup support at Hub and Oak goes beyond providing a desk. You get founder led mentorship, introductions to investors and legal experts, lease guidance, community events, and a team that has worked with 550+ businesses across Delhi, Noida, and Gurgaon since 2017. It is the kind of support most coworking spaces promise and very few actually deliver.

I will be straight with you. When we started Hub and Oak in 2017, the pitch was simple. Good workspace, great locations in Delhi NCR and transparent pricing. That was it.

But somewhere around year two, something changed. The founders sitting in our spaces in Defence Colony and Okhla stopped asking about the wifi speed and started asking harder questions. How do I structure this fundraise? Can you introduce me to someone who understands commercial leases? I just got a term sheet. Who do I call?

We were not a mentorship company. We were a coworking space. Except, without really planning it, we had become both.

Nine years later, that is the thing that actually sets us apart. Not the ergonomic chairs (though those are good too).

Startup Support: What Mentorship Actually Looks Like Here

Most coworking spaces have a “community.” Usually that means a WhatsApp group, maybe a pizza night once a quarter.

What we have built is different and honestly it happened more organically than by design.

Our founder Srishti Dhir has spent over a decade in real estate and business advisory. She is a London Business School alumna who has seen enough bad lease agreements, poorly timed office moves and avoidable compliance headaches to fill a book. When members hit a wall, she is often the first call. Not because it is her job title but because that is how this place runs.

The conversations that happen here are not scheduled workshops. They are real. A founder figuring out whether to take a private cabin or wait and sign a managed office lease. A two person team trying to understand what “super built up area” actually means before they sign anything. A bootstrapped startup asking whether a Defence Colony address will hurt or help them with enterprise clients.

We talk through all of it. Specifically:

• Workspace decisions: How much space you actually need and how to structure a lease that does not trap you when you grow
• Commercial lease navigation: Carpet area vs. super built up, security deposit norms, fit out clauses that catch first timers off guard
• Business credibility: How to present your company to clients and investors when you are working out of a shared office
• Scaling decisions: When to upgrade from a hot desk to a cabin and when a managed office becomes more suitable.

The Practical Stuff: What Members Get

The mentorship is the heart of it. But there is a whole layer of practical support underneath that most people do not know about until they need it.

People who can help you

Nine years in Delhi NCR’s commercial real estate market means we know people. Not “we have a vendor list” know people. Actually know them. Lawyers who understand startup equity structures. CAs who have set up GST compliance for early stage companies and will not charge you like you are a large enterprise. Developers like DLF and Max Estates take our member introductions seriously.

And when you are ready to fit out your own office, you do not need to find someone. Our in house interior design and build team handles it directly. Space planning, procurement, execution, the whole thing. Built specifically for commercial offices, by people who already know how your business works.

When you need someone, we make the call. That is different from a directory.

Lease review and compliance guidance

This is unglamorous but genuinely important. The number of founders who have signed commercial leases with clauses they did not understand is staggering. Lock in periods buried in sub clauses. Fit out obligations that become your liability. Security deposit terms that are completely non standard.

We sit with members and go through lease terms before they sign. We flag the things that tend to go wrong. And if it needs a lawyer, we connect you with one who actually knows commercial tenancy, not a generalist who will charge you for the education.

Events that are actually useful

We run regular sessions at our Defence Colony and Okhla spaces. Not panel discussions where four people talk for 90 minutes and nothing useful happens. Roundtables, working sessions, informal meetups where founders really talk to each other.

Topics we have covered recently:

• Fundraising readiness for seed and pre-Series A startups
• Negotiating commercial leases as a first time tenant
• Building a remote first team from a Delhi NCR base
• GST registration, compliance and virtual office setup

Space that scales with you

A startup that outgrows its desk and has to scramble for a new office loses a minimum of three months of momentum. Hub and Oak members move across workspace types without starting over. From dedicated desk to private cabin to managed office, all within the same network, same team, no new landlord to convince.

Many companies have not just rented a space with us, they have scaled with Hub & Oak. One example is Repro Books, which initially rented space at our coworking centre and later moved into a private office as the business grew.

Fit out support when you are ready for your own office

When you outgrow coworking, Hub and Oak’s interior design and build team handles the entire fit out of your new space (built for commercial offices specifically). 

Here Is the Honest Difference

Large coworking networks have impressive numbers. Hundreds of mentors. Thousands of members. Dozens of cities. It looks great in a pitch deck.

But when you are one of 5,000 members spread across 20 cities, you are a seat occupancy number. The mentorship you get is scheduled, standardised, and often delivered by someone who has never run a business in Delhi NCR and genuinely cannot tell you whether a Jasola address or an Aerocity address is  more suitable for your kind of client.

At Hub and Oak, your name is known. Your business situation is known. The person you are talking to has probably had a similar conversation with three other founders this month and can tell you exactly how those situations played out.

We have worked with 550+ businesses across Delhi NCR. Our ratings sit between 4.6 and 4.7 out of 5 across locations. Neither of those numbers happened because we have a good loyalty program. They happened because people stayed, referred others and came back when they needed more space.

The founders who started with us on a single desk and are now running full floor managed offices will say the same thing when you ask them: the space was fine. The people were the reason.

If you are building something in Delhi NCR and want a workspace that is actually invested in your outcome, take a look at our spaces or just reach out directly. Come see it for yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions