Hotdesk: the startup disrupting the office-sharing market
Hotdesk is booming and is on its way to become the number one platform for shared offices and coworking spaces in the world. The Dubai-based startup has shown a huge rise since its initial incorporation in Delaware in May ‘19, followed by moving its Headquarters to Dubai in December ‘19 to be among the first purely tech startup incorporated at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). The startup has shown great progress moving from one city to another to be now available in 16 different cities across 4 different continents. We are speaking about huge cities and capitals of the world such as Cairo, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and the list goes on...
Hotdesk was founded by quite a decentralized team. The Founder Mohamed Khaled is an Egyptian/Irish tech-entrepreneur working in Dubai, joined by Palestinian Ali Shweki who was his co-worker in a consulting firm in Abu Dhabi, and Geneva Business School Alumni Mohamed Elsarrag, who is an Egyptian living in Barcelona.
The B2C game-changer
Hotdesk is creating a new market by introducing the sharing economy to the office space market, giving the ability to companies to list their extra working spaces from extra office rooms, meeting rooms and even desks and share these spaces with startups and freelancers in need for a place to work.
The platform also consolidates all the coworking spaces in a certain city, literally turning the app into a pocket-office access device.
Hotdesk operates on an asset-free model, only acting as a tech-medium to connect users to hosts. This comes at a critical time after the fall of WeWork due to their doubtful economics. WeWork generated $1.8BN revenue in 2018 with only 524 spaces, which shows how large this market is. However, they also proved that no company can carry the weight of these assets and leases alone - and that’s where Hotdesk has an edge.
Hotdesk’s app is available on App Store and Play Store and comes with many benefits. From Google-powered searches to 3 click bookings, Hotdesk provides flexible options where users can book a space for an hour, day or month. Payments can be made using cash or card, and they use world-renowned ‘Stripe’ as their payment gateway, creating the ability to accept payments from 200+ countries.
Hotdesk is also currently engaging with Geneva Business School Barcelona, one of the most respectable and well-known business schools, and on its way to establishing a partnership to provide students and faculties with easily bookable and affordable workspaces on weekends when the university campus is closed.
B2B - transforming workspace management
Hotdesk also reaches into the corporate world, by providing advanced technology solutions for workspace management. They create tailored white-labeled apps for corporates to manage their global workspaces. These apps enable corporates to enhance workspace/meeting room booking processes, enable automation such as unlocking the door with your phone once you’ve booked, and gives management insight into deep data analytics regarding the utilisation of their workspace enabling them to make better decisions on their leases and office traffic management.
Hotdesk is currently in the final proposal stage for creating an app for a Fortune 500 company.
Presence in the Tech Scene
Since its official launch in September 2019, Hotdesk featured at Web Summit 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal (the biggest tech conference on the planet) - and Step Conference 2020 in Dubai. This helped expose the startup to many stakeholders, such as startups, freelancers, investors, corporations, and more.