Miguel McKelvey (left), Turochas T Fuad (JP)

WeWork, a New York-based coworking start-up, entered Southeast Asia two years ago, following the acquisition of its Singapore-based rival Spacemob. It was Ole Ruch, managing director at WeWork, who introduced Spacemob founder Turochas “T” Fuad to WeWork founders Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann in New York and thus, began the strategic expansion into the region. The company, last valued at US$47 billion, began its regional expansion with a handful of offices in Singapore and Jakarta but has since entered Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur and Manila. In Jakarta, WeWork owns four upmarket coworking spaces mainly catered to start-ups and multinationals while its local competitor, Go-Rework, also owns four spaces in the city following a merger late last year. During a visit to Jakarta, WeWork regional managing director Turochas Fuad and cofounder Miguel met with The Jakarta Post to talk about the company’s future business strategy. Below is an excerpt of the interview.

How did WeWork come to acquire Spacemob?

We’ve always had a very cohesive vision of what our companies were trying to achieve. Spacemob was trying to raise more money and WeWork was looking into entering Southeast Asia. It’s a win-win.

I [Miguel] met T and had a chance to understand his motivations. He’s an entrepreneur, so there was a risk that he and his team wouldn’t stick around if our motivations were not aligned. That alignment is a big part of any successful integration.

What did Spacemob contribute to WeWork’s ecosystem?

Adding the Spacemob team and T as the leader was the most important contribution. Ninety-five percent of Spacemob employees are still with us. Being opportunistic is a big part of our strength. When we see something that looks good, we don’t hesitant to move quickly.

We’re still acting like a start-up, we have a lot of room to grow, and that keeps us energized.

How’s business in Southeast Asia over the past two years?

It’s been amazing. Last year, we focused on entering tier-one cities and grew more than 10 times in terms of employees in Southeast Asia.

Indonesia, which has the second-most WeWork locations, is one of our most important markets outside of Singapore. So we plan to double our locations over the next 12 months.

As a global statistic, around 30 percent of our members are enterprises but it goes up to 45 percent in Singapore, depending on the month. We’ve seen similar numbers — between the high 20s and low 30s — in Jakarta.

We can secure such percentages because we can customize a large office, which is between 50 and 100 desks.

What are the company’s expansion plans for Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, this year?

This year will be about growing our team — we’re looking for local leaderships — and localizing a global product by catering to the sensitivities of local cultures.

In Indonesia, for example, we added prayer rooms and introduced non-halal and halal microwaves. We also modified boardrooms because we noticed that it’s very typical for junior employees to sit on the outer rim of the room while seniors sit around the table.

We are very much focused on Jakarta but there are tier-two Indonesian cities like Surabaya, Bali and Bandung that we are aware of and still monitoring for the right time to enter.

We did our first participating lease with the Sinarmas MSIG tower [in South Jakarta], where we engaged the landlord to become an investor and co-owner of the WeWork location. This means that he shares the revenue and cost of managing that location. We’re expecting a lot more of these participating leases across Southeast Asia, especially in Jakarta.

We also imagine bringing-in more of our business models to Southeast Asia such as our Flatiron coding school, which is growing fast in the United States.

To bring the school in, part of what we’d look for is a partnership. If there’s a company that needs to hire a lot of software engineers to improve their tech talent, we could create a partnership.

How do you manage workplace-related issues such as harassment and discrimination?

We start with the standard offerings to cater to local needs, which is again why we hire local leaders. Those are issues that we do care about and our community staff has been trained to ensure that certain things are done according to local regulations and sensitive issues.

How do you decide when to draw the line between standardization and localization?

We’ve always been against making big declarations. So we always want to empower our community teams to make the right decisions within certain guidelines.

Glass walls, for example, are one common point of contention. We have had members come in, literally from the first WeWork location, and ask “can I cover the glass?”.

For the most part, we don’t allow that — unless related to certain financial activity or statutory banking requirements — because we believe in the openness and energy that comes from seeing people while working. Its psychology 101: familiarity breeds friendliness.

We believe that just walking down the hall and seeing people’s faces increases the chances of striking up conversation, which can lead to friendship, learning or business connections.

Popular

Great Barrier Reef hit by record bleaching

Govt to undo latest curbs on personal imports

Middle East on edge as Israel and Iran trade threats