EV Hive Secures $20 Million Series A Funding

EV Hive co-working space has scored a Series A funding worth of $20 million (277 billion Rupiah) led by Softbank Ventures Korea, H&CK Partners, and Tigris Investment. All three are based in Korea. Several new investors involved in this round are Naver, LINE Ventures, and STIC Investment. Also participated are the previous investors, such as East Ventures, SMDV, Sinar Mas Land, Insignia Venture Partners, Intude Ventures, and angel investors (Michael Widjaya and Chris Angkasa).

The company plans to use the funding for expansion, including regional opportunities, to a 100 new locations. They're claimed to have more than 3000 active members.

Previously, EV Hive has received Pre-Series A Funding worth of $3.5 million or around 46 billion Rupiah in September 2017.

EV Hive was established in June 2015 by East Venture as a "pet project" and in May 2017 has become a separate company. Currently, the co-working space company already has 21 locations in Jabodetabek and Medan. In total, the area has reached 30 thousand sqm.

Carlson Lau, EV Hive's CEO told DailySocial, "The co-working space business has a huge potential in Indonesia because of the sheer numbers of SMEs in the country, many of whom require affordable access to workspaces and businesses services. Co-working is a powerful platform to effectively help lower these small businesses and startups’ cost of doing business. Besides, co-working currently only occupies less than 1% of the total commercial real estate space, and we think that in the future co-working will a mainstream business where more than 20% of all commercial real estates are fitted out as co-working spaces."

In Indonesia, co-working space still considered as a new business and tend not to gain profit. However, the big players are marking their territory. US giant co-working space, WeWork, has confirmed its presence in Indonesia, while Chinese co-working space UrWork investing in local service Go-Rework.

Although it's still focused in Jabodetabek area, Lau assured to expand to other big cities in Indonesia. He said, "Outside of Jabodetabek, we are already in Medan, and we are planning to open co-working spaces in all the major cities in Indonesia. Our expansion decision is largely to cities with strong entrepreneurial communities who require access to services, and with whom we think there are great cross city collaboration opportunities with our existing members."

Regarding the regional expansion, Lau ensures that his team will focus on Indonesia this year but still opens opportunities for neighbor countries.

"We have already received a number of enquiries from landlords and business partners to expand into their cities in SEA countries. We see great potential in Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia where we witness a lot of startup activity. In fact, some of our existing members are already making plans to expand into these countries, and we plan to follow our customers in their regional expansion plans," he concluded.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian