Vanessa Hendriadi from GoWork Follows Passion to Bridge Communities

Vanessa Hendriadi has a longing to do something more impactful in her family's real estate business, so she started to initiate one of the leading coworking spaces in Indonesia, GoWork.

Indonesia is home to more than 88 million millennial population. The country is predicted to become the world's eighth largest economy by 2020, according to research by consulting firm Deloitte. The big cities here are ideal markets for co-working space businesses.

After graduating from the University of Southern California in 2002, Vanessa started her professional portfolio in 2004 by working as Marketing Director at PT Atlantic Biruaya, a mineral water company under her family's Mikatasa Group, which also serves the business of buying and selling, beverages, groceries. chemicals, and others. In the end, he was promoted to Director of Operations in the holding group in 2009. and implemented changes to streamline the business.

In June 2013, he ventured and built a software system for property management called Gaea. Vanessa, however, is not satisfied with her professional career, because she has a desire to build a business related to hobbies and passions. “I love food and yoga, and I realized that all these industries lead to one goal — to build community. So, I finally chose to build a co-working space, which combines my professional experience in property management and my passion for connecting people,” he explained to KrASIA in a recent interview.

In 2016, with capital from family, friends, and the Ismaya group, a company that oversees a popular F&B and hospitality chain in Indonesia, Vanessa founded her first co-working space company, Rework, which integrates several coworking spaces with a coffee shop run by the Ismaya group. in several strategic locations in Jakarta.

As a solo founder, he built Rework from scratch, with a heavy workload. In fact, at that time her second son was only nine months old, so she also had the responsibility of being a mother. “I feel like my head is about to explode, no matter how much I've done, there's still a lot that awaits ahead. It is so crazy. I don't want to worry too much, but I have to. Many times I wonder, is it appropriate for me to run a startup, but also as a woman and a mother, I have to build strong family roots. Fortunately, my partner and family were very supportive and never judged me,” said Vanessa.

In 2017, he attended the grand opening of co-working startup GoWork, where he met the company's co-founders, Richard Lim and Donny Tandianus. Hendriadi reconnected with Lim, who was an old friend. The three of them, without further ado, realized that they had the same goal: to build the largest coworking space in Indonesia. It wasn't long before the two were exploring partnership opportunities.

"When I started Rework, I didn't see how big it was until I got into the business. I finally decided that I had to find a partner, because I couldn't do it all alone. After we shared some discussions and our vision to empower multiple companies and become dominant player, we joined in early 2018," said Vanessa.

Hendriadi's Rework together with Lim and Tandianus' GoWork merged into a new company called Go-Rework, which initially had five locations with a total of 3.500 square meters in Jakarta. The company later changed its name to GoWork in mid-2018 for marketing reasons.

In October 2018, Go-Rework closed its Series A round and raised USD 9,9 million from Gobi Partners and The Paradise Group, with participation from Mahanusa Capital and a second "Durian" fund from 500 Startups. GoWork doubled its footprint in 2019, according to CFO Richard Lim.

Today, GoWork successfully operates 18 branches covering more than 35.000 square meters, with most of them located in the capital with one branch in Bali. The company also announced plans to launch new locations in Surabaya and several cities in Indonesia by mid-2020, expanding its footprint to 65.000 square meters. GoWork only operates in Indonesia and has no plans for international expansion.

According to Hendriadi, GoWork locations still consider high occupancy rates, usually in the 90-100% range.

To become the dominant player in Indonesia, Hendriadi, Lim, and Tandianus set a strategy that focuses on premium customers who are willing to pay higher GoWork subscription rates. Therefore, they operate GoWork in places such as shopping centers or office buildings, which are easily accessible using public transportation. "Almost 70% of the members visited more than one location," said Hendriadi. He also claims that customers “can gain more credibility by working in GoWork’s premium coworking space.”

"There are many coworking space locations in Indonesia, such as CoHive or Outpost, but there are some players targeting the premium class, which we think is a huge potential market. Through this segment, we can get more clients, not only from startups, but also from startups. from conventional and multinational companies," he added.

Competition is getting tougher. In 2017, WeWork acquired Spacemob, a coworking space based in Singapore, then started its business in Indonesia by establishing a branch in Jakarta in the third quarter of 2018. Not long after, WeWork opened six locations in the Indonesian capital.

Lessons learned from the WeWork case: Monetization is the key to long-term success

Even though GoWork and WeWork position themselves as premium co-working spaces, Vanessa claims that GoWork has reached a profit in mid-2019. However, she refuses to reveal more details. There are about 5.000 customers, including company employees and freelancers. Monthly fees range from USD 150-200, depending on the service required.

All of GoWork's founders have strong and close relationships with property developers, said Hendriadi. This helps companies find spaces that serve their purpose.

“We discussed how GoWork can increase visitor traffic to shopping centers or other properties run by this developer. When developers look at the concept of traffic coming through each of our locations, they mostly want to secure partnerships, even invest in GoWork,” he said. So far, the company has investors including Sinar Mas Land, Indonesia Paradise Property, Agung Podomoro Land, Lippo Group, and MNC Land.

Currently, GoWork has three main focuses: providing flexible co-working spaces with attractive interiors to facilitate client interaction; organizing events or workshops, where members can engage with one another; and build user engagement through mobile apps.

Currently, GoWork's clients consist of large companies and mature startups, such as the state-owned company PT Pegadaian, Gojek, and Oyo.

“We make 'sustainability' a priority. If we look at the current startup landscape, most companies are focused on growth followed by burning money. We don't believe that it is necessary," said Hendriadi.

- This article was first released by KRASIA. Re-released as part of a collaboration with DailySocial