naked Group founder Grant Horsfield sees a “revolution” coming for trillions of dollars worth of properties
Premium co-working operator naked Hub has transformed the way more than 10,000 people work in Asia, and now the Shanghai-based startup is making it possible for any landlord to join the flexible office revolution.
As the next step in this battle against boring workplaces, naked Hub has struck a deal with Ascendas-Singbridge to bring its new Community-As-A-Service platform to the Singaporean developer’s newly renovated office property in downtown Shanghai, Ascendas Innovation Place, when it opens later this year.
The combination of a tailored and custom-branded version of naked’s community app, cloud-based property management software and community management services, will turn the entire 14-storey, 25,000 square metre office tower into a networked, social workspace.
Mobile App Helps Members Clear Business Hurdles
The app’s community functions allow members and operators to share event information
“This changes everything,” said Grant Horsfield, founder of naked Hub’s parent company naked Group. “By offering Community-As-A-Service, naked Hub is now powering the revolution in real estate from traditional to flexible, a revolution that affects trillions of dollar-worth of properties.”
Community-As-A-Service features a proprietary mobile app that integrates business and social tools – making it easier for members to solve business needs like finding suppliers, partners and service providers, as well as reserve shared spaces such as meeting and event rooms.
Already in use by naked’s more than 10,000 “hubbers,” the company reports that on the business side, more than 57 percent of requests for business assistance posted on the app have resulted in successful solutions for its users.
On the social side members can build business connections via community feeds and live private chats, and the app also creates links between the office occupants and retail layers of a building, and between occupants and landlords. Food and beverage tenants, for example, can use the app to post exclusive offers to the entire network, while landlords can send out notifications about events in their buildings and members can even order refreshments from the service hub.
naked Hub Rolls Out Custom Co-Working Kit
naked Hub’s property management service provides builder operators with their own high tech dashboards
In addition to the app for members, naked’s Community-As-A-Service features a cloud-based version of the company’s proprietary co-working property management and operating system.
The new platform enables traditional landlords and large, multi-building occupiers to offer tenants and employees enterprise-level tools to improve efficiency and ensure smooth service.
Through the back-end interface the building operator can maintain CRM data on tenants, manage the leasing process for occupiers, and directly monitor physical maintenance of the building. A ticketing system allows the landlord to monitor service delivery in the building and a single dashboard gives access to all functions.
And since the app doesn’t yet solve every problem, naked Hub, an offshoot of luxury resort brand naked Group, also draws on its hospitality roots to send experienced community managers and curators to oversee each workspace.
Ascendas-Singbridge Gets Flexible With New Tower
“We are excited to partner with naked Hub to enable our tenants at Ascendas Innovation Place to connect with each other,” said Yi Ta Chng, CEO of Business Community Development at Ascendas-Singbridge. “The way we work has evolved. More companies are looking for a space that offers them network and community. As landlord, we see the need to provide more than just a physical space. We want to facilitate connections and build a vibrant, innovative and inspiring community for our tenants,”
Located at 686 Jiujiang Road in Shanghai’s Huangpu district, the developer’s Ascendas Innovation Place is slated to open in the second half of this year. The boutique office nearby the city’s core commercial hub of People’s Square enjoys easy access to metro stations and retail amenities.
Ascendas-Singbridge is a leading pan-Asian developer of urban and business space solutions with over S$20 billion ($15.2 billion) in assets under management.
Asian Co-Working Operator Becomes Tech Service Provider
Community-As-A-Service aims to enable landlords to create a naked Hub experience in their buildings
For naked Hub, the office project in Shanghai is only the beginning. The two-year-old startup has built a network of 46 premium co-working locations in operation or under development, and is now betting its technology will open the floodgates to the mass adoption of innovative workspaces.
“Providing Community-As-A-Service expands naked Hub’s business scope and scalability in an almost unlimited way,” says Horsfield. “As big and exciting as it is, Community-As-A-Service is only one of the components in an emerging suite of services that naked Hub is providing to building owners to fully embrace and join the Sharing Economy.”
The technology behind naked’s Community-As-A-Service platform was developed by naked Innovation, the company’s in-house incubation team of 50 technologists, product managers, user experience designers and software engineers. The company says its community app sees an impressive 30 percent ratio of daily to monthly active users. naked Hub also deploys 50 trained Community Managers as part of its new service platform.
“Imagine a world where office buildings are actually vibrant communities where people actually know each other and help each other,” said Dominic Penaloza, Chief Innovation Officer of naked Group and founder of Community-As-A-Service. “That is what we’ve achieved at naked Hub’s network of coworking spaces, and we are now making the secret sauce available to any building owner in the world.”
Powering a Growing Platform
naked Hub’s network of co-working centres stretches across Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, and the brand is rolling out further venues in China’s Hangzhou, Vietnam’s Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and London. Last week, the startup backed by Hong Kong’s Gaw Capital announced it was going intercontinental by picking up a 70 percent stake in Australian co-working provider Gravity.
Kicked off in 2015, naked Hub currently serves over 1,500 companies and over 10,000 members. Industry analysts project that co-working will claim an estimated 30 percent of the global commercial real estate market by 2030, up from single-digit percentages today.
This sponsored feature was created on behalf of naked Hub. For more information, please visit www.nakedhub.com
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