Ucommune becomes Asia’s largest co-working space provider with acquisition of Woo Space

Ucommune is now China’s largest co-working space provider with the acquisition of China’s Woo Space. The announcement comes two months after Ucommune’s acquisition of New Space, boosting the valuation of Ucommune to US$ 1.7 billion. Founded in 2015 by Mao Daqing, Ucommune provides startups, SMEs, and corporate tenants with on-demand, short-term leasing, and customized space solutions. It transforms underused stock assets to flexible, convenient, effective and economic co-working spaces, provides a vibrant platform for new-grads, oversea returnees and start-up entrepreneurs to grow together, seamlessly connects available resources via an online community, and ultimately reaches the win-win-win situation for entrepreneurs, companies, and government.

In early 2016, Ucommune participated in the A-round financing of Woo Space through strategic equity investment. After the merger, both parties will leverage their complementary strengths to enhance the integration and engagement with newly jointed community, and to create value-adding services through the platform. The newly formed entity will work relentlessly to address the problems of the coworking industry, while forging new breakthroughs through tapping the community synergy and incorporating new technologies. It currently has 100 locations in over 30 cities in the world, aggregating over 1,000 professional business service suppliers across a broad spectrum. It also claims to be serving over 40,000 individual members and over 3,000 enterprises.

This strategic merger of the two strong players will drive further integration and upgrading of the industry in China. The post-merger strategy will focus on platform upgrading, integrating the membership system, enhancing exchanges and cooperation between the two companies in location and corporate service resources, as well as the standardization of community operation services, which will set the industry benchmark in the coworking sector.

“The merger draws on the cultural and technical strengths of both companies – community spirit, commercial development, and ecological development. All our members will be integrated to our ucommune platform to enable more efficient and effective operations and better community synergy,” says Dr. Mao Daqing.

“Woo Space is a team that I have admired and followed closely. The 1990s-born CEO has deep insights into the needs of young people in the coworking space and keen on developing the potential of youths. The team’s astute ability to identify good location and their knowledge of cross-border relationships within the E-commerce industry have inspired ucommune,” says Dr.Mao.

Wan Liushuo, founder and CEO of Woo Space says, “Ucommune has a wealth of cross-regional, large-scale operational and management experience, as well as diversified financial operation capability. Both parties will be fully committed to synergizing resources, management capabilities to maximise our market share and commercial performance in membership operations and brand building.”

In recent years, coworking space sector has been growing at year-to-year rate of 30%. It is estimated that by 2019, the total operating area of coworking space in China will reach 51 million square meters. By 2030, 30% of office space will exist in the form of coworking spaces. In the next five years, the development of a platform and sharing economy will become an important part of promoting the growth of new economy.