WeWork confirms deal to buy Naked Hub, one of its main competitors in China

WeWork confirms deal to buy Naked Hub, one of its main competitors in China

WeWork  is selling up one of its major competitors in China after it announce a deal to obtain Naked Hub.

The deal was broadly reported by Chinese media yesterday, except WeWork has now established it from side to side a blog post starting its CEO Adam Neumann. Terms of the transaction be not reveal but Bloomberg report that it is worth about $400 million.

Naked Hub is an offshoot of China-based comfort resort company bare Group that was in progress in 2015 by Grant Horsfield and Delphine Yip-Horsfield. The company is above all anchor in China, with nearly all of its location in Beijing and Shanghai, but it has prolonged into Australia, Hong Kong and Vietnam. All told, it claims to have 10,000 members crossways its 24 office locations.

Yet though a deal to join with Singapore-based JustCo was call off, Naked Hub had appear as one of WeWork’s fiercest competitor in China with the objective to carry on that battle in Southeast Asia and extra markets, as I write last year.

WeWork isn’t comment at this point concerning how it plans to integrate the two brands, but its CEO Neumann salaried compliment to the Naked Hub business.

“We have establish an identical who shares our thoughts about the significance of space, society, design, culture, and technology. Together, I think we will have a deep impact in helping businesses crossways China grow, scale, and succeed,” he wrote.

“China-born naked Hub and WeWork may approach from vastly unlike backgrounds, but there is more that bind us than separate us. The values we share on the way to creating a vibrant society for our members by by design, technology, and warmth are core to how both companies are winning,” said Horsfield, Naked Group’s founder   and chairman.

Naked Hub may be a rising threat to WeWork China, but it is distant from the only main competitor. Unicorn Ucommune — which changed its name from URwork following a lawsuit from WeWork — is perhaps the largest profile Chinese challenger.

WeWork launched in China in 2016 via Shanghai. Today it said it has 13 locations in Greater China with plans to add to that to more than 40 by the finish of this year. That’s a go that it said resolve quadruple its membership numbers in China from 10,000 to 40,000.

The contract is WeWork’s second gaining of a competitor in Asia, its first being a contract to buy SpaceMob, a then 1.5-year-old company in Singapore, previous year.

The company has been lining its pockets to petroleum a big push into Asia.

Last year, the firm span out a WeWork China body back by $500 million from investors, as capital also went to WeWork Japan — a unit that investor SoftBank own half of — and WeWork Pacific, its business listening carefully on Southeast Asia and other parts of the area which also got a $500 million to spend. All of that capital was part of a $4.4 billion asset round in WeWork as of SoftBank.