WeWork, a New York City co-working and office space start-up, has recently announced its US$500m investment to strengthen its presence in Southeast Asia. This comes after it amassed a total of US$500m in investments from Softbank, Hony Capital, Greenland Holdings and China Oceanwide two weeks ago.
In a bid to bring its business on a global scale, WeWork is now gearing up for its expansion in Southeast Asia and South Korea worth half billion dollars. In fact, the company has noted the acquisition of Spacemob, a 1.5-year-old co-working company in Singapore, for an undisclosed amount, reports TechCrunch.
Spacemob's founder and chief executive Turochas Fuad has been commissioned as WeWork's managing director in Singapore, and all of his employees will also be joining him at their new parent company. In November 2016, Spacemob raised a total of US$5.5m in seed funding from Indonesia's Alpha JWC Ventures and India's Vertex Ventures.
Meanwhile, WeWork's acquisitions include FieldLens, a New York-based mobile communication for the construction industry bought in June; Welkio, a California-based digital sign-in software company bought in 2016; and Case Corporation, a Wisconsin-based construction and agricultural equipment manufacturer bought in 2015.
WeWork's new investment funds were expected to go to new markets outside Asia. Nevertheless, WeWork's entry in Southeast Asia through Singapore has been deemed a viable decision considering the country has sky-high rates for offices, which in fact, among the most expensive in the world. In entire Asia, WeWork already has existing offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul and Bangalore.
So far, in 2017 alone, WeWork has already raised three significant investments. In July, it got US$500m in sum from Softbank, Hony Capital, Greenland Holdings and China Oceanwide. Previous funding shows it got US$760m in June and US$300m in March. WeWork is now valued at US$20b.
