Coworking space provider WeWork has opened its WeWork Lab at its City House location in Robinson Road for earl stage startups. The lab can accommodate 50 members.

The labs, which are the company's innovation platform for early-stage startups, provide members with access to custom programming, mentorships, investments, and educational resources to grow their business.

Mr Adrian Tan, head of Labs at WeWork Southeast Asia, stated, “With the South-east Asia region experiencing unprecedented growth in terms of commercial innovation and investments, there are still key dynamics at play that remain a puzzle to outsiders due to its cultural differences, nuances in consumer behaviours and rapid pace of change. With WeWork Labs, we can help to nurture and unlock the potential of early stage start-ups by giving them key resources to take their businesses and ideas to a global scale.”

WeWork currently has nine co-working spaces here, in areas such as Suntec Tower, Anson Road and Cross Street, and 335 locations in 83 cities worldwide.

Meanwhile, the WeWork Labs concept was launched in early 2018 with 28 locations in 16 cities in the United States, Korea, Brazil, Israel, India and elsewhere. The labs have supported over 1,000 startups. Every lab has a manager who acts as a collaborator who can provide educational resources during roundtables, lecture series and one-on-one meetings.

This coworking lab will further add to the growing popularity of coworking spaces in the island nation. A report from property consultant Edmund Tie & Company stated that there were about 110 co-working spaces here as at the end of May, amounting to around 1.1 million sq ft. It is expected to expand to around 1.4 million sq ft by the end of this year. And WeWork, which recently got another $3 Bn boost from SoftBank, seems fully poised to cash on this opportunity.

Image credits: The forwards