We are pleased to announce that we have secured £4 million in Series A financing from a group of industry-leading investors, spearheaded by JLL Spark Global Venture Fund.
This marks the first European investment by the JLL Spark Fund, the Silicon Valley-based venture capital arm of JLL who were impressed with our growth and vision. This includes placing a business in a new office every three hours and taking total listings to over 5,000 offices on our website, covering the whole flexible office market.
The latest investment takes our fundraising total to £6.4 million over three funding rounds. Other investors include Downing Ventures and the Directors of M7 Real Estate (owners of commercial property management and data software Coyote).
Starwood Capital (via PropTech fund Concrete), an existing investor, also increased its stake significantly. We have previously been backed by some of the biggest names in the UK tech scene, including former Dragon (BBC Dragon’s Den) James Caan, Streetcar (now Zipcar) Founder Brett Akker and count former technology advisor to the Prime
Minister Rohan Silva as co-founder.
The fresh round of funding will be used to invest further into our technology platform, evolving our proposition to attract medium-sized businesses (of 50 people or more) as demand for flexible office space from larger businesses soars.
We already own London’s largest real-time dataset on flexible office space, and will invest further in our data infrastructure and tooling to help flexible office providers such as WeWork improve their offerings.
Our ultimate ambition is to be the “Booking.com” for flexible office space worldwide.
We are at the centre of the largest revolution in commercial real estate this century, with 30% of corporate portfolios expected to be flexible office space by 2030, according to JLL.
In London, flexible office space has increased from 0.5% of total office space to 5% in just five years and has been labelled ‘the new hotel sector’ given the requirement for rapidly growing and shrinking SMEs to access office space they can move into immediately.
Our cutting-edge technology allows businesses to search and compare across an increasingly large and fragmented market.
Tushar Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of HubbleHQ, said: “Since launching four years ago, we’ve built an unrivalled technology platform that addresses the overwhelming need for finding and renting flexible office space, easily. When we started, our average client was a five-person startup needing desks in a coworking space for a few months. Now, we are frequently helping businesses with 50 staff or large multinationals renting space for a year or more.
The traditional lease market with its 10 year terms and significant upfront costs is no longer fit for purpose. Businesses want to be able to move in, or out, of an office in a matter of days and we’re able to help them do that.”
“The fact that some of the world’s most renowned real estate companies have partnered with us in this funding round is testament to the strength of our offering. We’re looking forward to working with them to achieve our ambition of being the world’s largest platform for flexible office space.”
Mihir Shah, Co-CEO at JLL Spark, commented: “We continue to see an increase in demand for flexible office space, and HubbleHQ’s technology platform does a great job streamlining the process of connecting a wide array of businesses with the right space for them. We are excited to help the HubbleHQ team scale their platform with JLL’s global reach and expertise.”
Our CTO and co-founder, Tom Watson, added: “We’ve worked really hard over the past few years to create a product that puts the user in control. I’m so proud of the whole HubbleHQ team, from those who have built the platform, to those who have marketed it and provided the best service we can to all of our customers. It’s taken a lot of work to get here, but there is plenty more yet to come!”
Search HubbleHQ, London’s largest office space platform here:
