PropTech and workspace booking platform Hotdesk website based in the United Arab Emirates has successfully raised $1 million in its newest fundraising round.
The Seed round, led by leading office space facilitator Virtuzone, recorded the participation of AlZayani Investments, a key real estate group with a significant commercial property footprint in Western Europe and North America, through their Venture Capital arm Zayani Venture Capital (ZVC), headquartered in Bahrain. Youssef Salem, Swvl‘s CFO, and Khaled AlFahim, a board member of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce, were among the high-profile angel investors in this round.
Hotdesk was founded by Mohamed Khaled, who was recently involved in Swvl’s $1.5 billion SPAC merger as Director of Finance, with the goal of disrupting the Real Estate industry by offering flexible, on-demand access to workplaces, hot desks, private offices, and conference rooms. As a result, Hotdesk has matched untapped revenue generation prospects in underutilized facilities with market opportunities serving the growing tide of hybrid, remote, and freelance professionals.
In 2021, the number of deals closed by real estate startups in MENA increased by 30% year over year. Hotdesk’s current funding round is the fourth largest of the year, and it is the first PropTech focusing on the unconventional economy to rank in the top ten funding rounds in Real Estate since 2020.
Businesses with unused workspaces can use the unique technology to lease their unoccupied office space and generate more revenue. Coworking spaces, shared offices, hotel business centers, and vacant furnished commercial office spaces are all among Hotdesk’s hosts.
Sharing his vision of the future, Mohamed Khaled elaborated: “We are amidst a pivotal point in history – where work and workspaces are democratized. Hybrid models are the future, and Hotdesk falls right in between giving the comfort of working from home, yet being able to socialize, be equipped, and without the daunting corporate office experience. Businesses have become smarter and leaner post-covid, and no one wants a 5-year unfurnished lease anymore. Plug-and-play scalable workspace solutions are the way forward.”
Hotdesk operates on an asset-free approach, meaning it does not own or lease any of its workplaces, instead bringing together a disparate market of vacant commercial real estate on a single platform. To date, the company has earned $100k+ in gross bookings, 10,000+ hours of bookings, 1.5k+ users, and 3,000+ rooms and spaces from 300+ hosts across 55 cities in EMEA during its soft launch. The PropTech startup intends to use the funding to further its expansion into the UAE, Egypt, and Spain.
In light of this investment, Chairman and Co-founder of Virtuzone, Neil Petch, concluded: “Exploring innovative solutions that can advance entrepreneurship has always been one of our fundamental objectives. We see great potential in the workspace solutions that Hotdesk brings, and these align with our goals to remove barriers to entrepreneurship and make it a lot easier to start and do business in the UAE and abroad.”
