The Coworking Trend in Southeast Asia

Coworking is booming in Southeast Asia. As startups and small businesses flourish, demand for flexible workspaces increases. This is particularly evident in cities where commercial rents are high and leases are long (minimum 2 years). Flexible workspaces offer a flexible and convenient “plug and play” option from traditional office spaces.

Coworking and flexible workspace providers in Southeast Asia are aggressively opening more sites, leasing larger spaces, and expanding their foothold. The coworking industry in Southeast Asia has leased more than 8.0 million square feet in the last two years, and projected to grow between 10-15% annually.

Venture Capital Flowing into Top 3 Regional Southeast Asia Coworking Spaces

JustCo

JustCo, Singapore’s largest coworking space provider, closed a Series B round in 2017 at US$200 million valuation from Thailand’s leading real estate developer, Sansiri.

The funds received will fuel JustCo’s expansion into other Southeast Asia cities like Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City and Manila. JustCo aims to open more coworking centres in at least six regional countries, bringing the total number of locations in Asia to 30 by 2018, covering a total floor space of more than 1 million square feet. With this, JustCo foresees its current members base to grow by five-fold from the current 12,000-strong community.

The Great Room

The Great Room raised a $5+ million Series-A funding round in 2017, led by CapitaLand’s corporate venture fund, C31 Ventures, with participation from iGlobe Partners and the family office of Goldbell Group.

Since its establishment in June 2016, The Great Room has expanded into 3 prime Singapore CBD locations, as well as 1 prime location in Bangkok CBD. New funds will be used for further regional expansion into Hong Kong.

EV Hive

Indonesia-based coworking space chain EV Hive raised a US$20 million Series A funding round in mid 2018, following up the US$3.7 million pre-Series A funding round it has raised in September 2017. EV Hive plans to use new funding to accelerate regional expansion plan with the goal to launch 100 locations throughout Southeast Asia by 2022, including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Growing demand for Elegant Coworking Software Platforms

Headquartered in London (UK), with offices in New Zealand and Bulgaria, OfficeRnD has seen growing demand for their coworking software platform in Asia. Their customer base easily grew to the hundreds, and their client portfolio includes local celebrities such as The Great Room, EV Hive (now known as CoCowork) and The Hive, who rely on OfficeRnD to automate operations, maximize productivity and improve members experience.

OfficeRnD works best with fast-growing, multi-site coworking operators. The system is built to support their business model and can help them improve efficiency fast, so they can scale the exceptional level of customer service that made them successful across all locations. In addition, OfficeRnD also acts like a central hub that integrates with and manages all business systems already in place, saving space operators time and allowing them to focus on growth.

OfficeRnD partnership with Omise, Coworking Payments Specialists

OfficeRnD has selected Omise as its payment partner in Southeast Asia. This partnership enables clients of OfficeRnD flexible workspace platform to accept payments in Singapore, Thailand and Japan. By offering more convenient and seamless payment transactions, OfficeRnD provides a simple and frictionless user journey for members to pay monthly rentals, as well as non-members to pay for other services, like events or meeting room bookings on an ad-hoc basis. Omise also has the ability to save a member’s card securely for future payments.

“With Omise being live in Singapore, Thailand and Japan, OfficeRnD’s clients can enjoy local currency settlements and one dashboard to view charges and payouts in real-time. With the combination of OfficeRnD and Omise, coworking operators have the option to automatically charge the outstanding amounts owed each month. This results in less payment delays and improved working capital” said Nick Gan, Country Manager, Omise Singapore.

If you're interested to learn more about how Omise can help power payments for your Coworking space, feel free to reach out to our sales team by using the form below!