WeWork to tap coworking-space market in Vietnam By Minh Tam HCMC – The U.S.-based coworking-space firm WeWork on December 3 will put into service its coworking-space office in E-Town Central Building in HCMC’s District 4 to serve individuals and enterprises, marking its third destination in the Southeast Asian region. Addressing a press conference held today, November 7, to introduce the office, Turochas “T” Fuad, managing director for Southeast Asia at WeWork, noted that the first coworking space in HCMC has four stories and can accommodate 1,000 people. He added that this is the firm’s largest space in the region, while the total floor area remains unknown. The coworking space will serve various customers, including freelancers, startups and enterprises employing hundreds of people. The working space will be adjusted based on customers’ requests. To date, WeWork has received rental bookings from multiple clients. Multi-national companies that plan to establish branches in the country and startups in the region accounted for the major portion of these bookings. WeWork boasts the advantage of completing construction within a short timeframe, thus helping reduce investment costs and making rental fees more competitive and flexible, though office rental fees in the city remain high compared with the rest of the region, except for Singapore, according to Fuad. Customers can visit any office among the 287 coworking-space facilities owned by WeWork across 77 cities in 23 countries, as long as they have the firm’s membership card. According to the WeWork representative, the firm will start opening new offices in the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia by the end of the year, in addition to the launch of the facility in Vietnam. The company hopes to roll out the second coworking-space office in Vietnam next year.
WeWork is to open its first office in Vietnam on 3 December. The company has been working with the government of Hanoi since last year and plans to build a new campus there by 2020. The office, WeWork’s third location in southeast Asia, will be followed by offices in the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia in the next couple of months and second office in Vietnam next year.