Edinburgh-based flexible workspace platform Desana has closed a $7.4m (£6.1m) funding round, with plans for further expansion globally.
The round was co-led by Berlin-based venture capital firm PT1 – PropTech1 Ventures – and JLL’s venture capital arm JLL Spark. Pre-seed investor Techstart Ventures also participated alongside BGF and Groundbreak Ventures.
Desana plans to use the funding to accelerate its growth in overseas markets, particularly in the US, where it has identified a “significant opportunity” to expand its list of enterprise customers. Its existing roster includes Github, Twilio, Sonos, Elastic and Splunk.
Since the business launched in 2019, it has expanded to offer workspaces in more than 600 cities across more than 60 countries, with its team spread across the UK, US and Canada.
Michael Cockburn, chief executive and co-founder of Desana, said: “We have come a long way from launching our initial product from our living rooms in Edinburgh, to working at a global scale with some of the biggest companies in the world as they fundamentally rethink the way they utilise office space.
“We established Desana ahead of one of the biggest shifts in working culture for generations, and this unprecedented transition has driven a huge amount of growth for us. But, given the scale of the change in this industry, we believe that there is still so much more to come.”
Tanguy Quero, investment principal at JLL Spark Global Ventures, said Desana is on a “quest to tackle a major challenge in the real estate industry today”.
Quero said: “Desana has developed a best-in-class platform to help companies address the challenge of managing a distributed workforce with a hybrid or flexible model. Their solution uniquely combines ease of deployment and scalability for management teams with great user experience for employees.”
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