Hubble, a leading online marketplace for flexible office space, has today announced a new funding round of €2.3 million, which takes the total investment in the company to around €11.6 million.
The top-up funding round was led by Pi Labs, as well as existing backers JLL Spark – the strategic investment venture arm of commercial real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle (NYSE:JLL), and Starwood Capital (via Concrete VC).
With COVID-19 radically transforming the world of work forever and businesses of all shapes and sizes now needing to determine their future workplace strategies, the funding will help to launch Hubble’s new suite of products aimed at supporting hybrid working.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, Hubble saw a 95% dip in office enquiries. But as of June 2021, the company has seen a recovery back to 80% of pre-COVID levels, having adapted to meet the demand for flexible office space – which is higher than ever as many businesses shed long-term leases for more flexible and hybrid options. In fact, over 70% of new office enquiries are asking for a hybrid set-up.
Founded in 2014 by Tushar Agarwal (CEO) and Tom Watson, Hubble’s new platform allows businesses to understand how their employees want to work, and then search for, set-up and manage their hybrid workplace in a data-driven way.
The Hubble platform is made up of four products, and enables businesses to figure out the right combination of office and remote work for their team (Hubble Workplace Strategy Tool), find a new office space (Hubble HQ), access a global network of on-demand workspaces (Hubble Pass) and send remote work perks to their team (Hubble Perks) —all managed on one dashboard.
A typical 100 person business is using a combination of the new Hubble products to reduce the size of their main office, whilst giving all their employees access to a global network of on-demand spaces and remote work perks. The result is ultimately achieving high employee satisfaction whilst also reducing overall office costs.
Hubble’s office search product, Hubble HQ, covers over 5,000 office spaces across the UK and it’s on-demand product, Hubble Pass, is available in 12 countries – currently with 200 spaces, growing by 30 spaces per month.
Tushar Agarwal, CEO and Co-founder at Hubble, commented: “The last 14 months have completely transformed the relationship between work and the workplace. Office space is a $22 trillion asset class, which will see it’s biggest change in a generation in the next five years. Hybrid working will become the new normal, as employers and employees seek to find the right balance between office and remote working. We’re proud to have been continuously backed by the biggest proptech investors in the world, to make hybrid working easy and accessible to businesses of all shapes and sizes.”
Hugo Silva, Investment Manager at PiLabs commented: “We’re seeing a huge shift in the future of work. Businesses want to be able to transition to a hybrid working model, but this is new and difficult for many. We’ve been seriously impressed with Hubble’s ability to deeply understand a new customer problem and use their foundation as pioneers in the flexible office market, to build a solution that makes hybrid working easy.”
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