UPDATED 09:00 EDT / FEBRUARY 27 2018

EMERGING TECH

Co-working startup Industrious wins $80M funding to take on WeWork

Industrious LLC, one of WeWork Inc.’s top competitors in the co-working market, today announced that it has raised an $80 million round to boost its efforts to challenge the company’s market dominance.

Riverwood Capital and real estate technology fund Fifth Wall Ventures led the investment. The cash infusion follows a year in which Industrious claims to have increased annual revenues by 150 percent, though it didn’t provide an absolute number. About half of the growth came from large enterprise customers, which is the key to how the startup sets itself apart from WeWork.

Industrious leases out “premium, ultraprofessional” office space aimed at appealing to traditional companies just as much as the startup crowd, which has historically been more closely associated with co-working. The primary benefit that the model offers to enterprises is convenience. A company that’s planning to expand to a new region, for example, can simply reserve space in a local co-working hub instead of having to rent and furnish an office by itself.

Industrious currently has locations in 25 U.S. cities. The companies that have a presence at the offices include General Motors Co., Pfizer Inc. and Hyatt Hotels Corp., as well as major tech firms such as Lyft Inc.

The startup divulged last March that it earned a 30 percent margin on leases at the time. Moreover, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Hodari said that Industrious is cash-flow positive.

This no doubt played a part in helping secure the new $80 million round. The startup has raised over $140 million to date from investors, including two separate Series B rounds. Yet while that’s a certainly considerable sum, it pales in comparison to the staggering $6.9 billion that WeWork has taken in to date. SoftBank Corp. provided the lion’s share of the capital last August in the form of a $4.4 billion investment.

Like Industrious, WeWork is also working to capitalize on the growing interest in co-working among large enterprises. The company revealed in December that a quarter of its $1 billion annual revenue and 30 percent of new bookings now come from organizations with more than 1,000 employees.

Image: Industrious

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