Malaysia’s coworking industry leader Common Ground closes a USD20 million Series A funding to fuel its regional expansion, triple its number of locations in Malaysia, and investing in upgrading its technology tools. This is in line with the brand’s efforts to grow its roster of corporate clients and partners as well as community members with shared office spaces making further inroads into Malaysia’s commercial real estate.
As Malaysia’s leading and largest coworking space, Common Ground caters to corporate clients, SMEs, startups, freelancers and everything in between. Since the company’s market launch in 2017, Common Ground has opened seven venues across Klang Valley with an average occupancy of 80%. Officially confirmed, Common ground is opening another 8 venues by the end of December 2018 across Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor. This rapid growth and expansion slated for just Malaysia in 2018 alone makes them the dominant player in their field at least 7x larger than any competitor in their market.
Commenting on the development, Erman Akinci, co-founder of Common Ground says, “We’re thrilled to have grown the coworking space market in Malaysia at an exponential rate as we keep our community members and partners at the forefront. With this investment, we aim to continue widening Common Ground’s offerings, as well as bolster our capabilities and plug the gaps in the coworking lifestyle ecosystem. As we secure our Series A investment, we look forward to building our future and realizing our vision of coworking. And at the same time undoubtedly locking ourselves in as Malaysia’s leading coworking space, creating Malaysia’s largest coworking community.”
As a springboard to its corporate innovation expansion plans, Common Ground also announced its regional expansion into Philippines and Thailand with four venues confirmed and scheduled to open later this year in Philippines and a few more slated to open in Thailand. By entering these markets, Common Ground will take the lead in becoming the region’s fastest growing coworking space in Southeast Asia, occupying an expected 500,000 square footage across 15 venues in Malaysia and Philippines by the end of 2018. Another key area of focus is improving the customer experience for its over 1,000 members by enhancing its technology tools to provide a better service offering for its community members.
“The workforce is rapidly evolving, as are its demands for flexibility, mobility and scalability; at the same time, employee expectations for a productive and flexible work environment are increasingly high. This infusion of capital will spur our ambitious plans to build a more efficient technology platform and expand our local and regional reach to cater to the current working generation’s demands and deliver the best possible service to our community members. This includes top notch wifi offerings, easier access to all our venues, providing a tech-based offering for our partners in real estate, enhance our data based offerings for partners and members and customising our lifestyle offerings such as our cafe tools optimisation and integration,” says Juhn Teo, co-founder of Common Ground.
