BGF continues to back Desana for future growth

BGF has completed a follow-on investment in Desana, a leading B2B global hybrid workspace platform as part of a $7.4m funding round.

The round was co-led by European focussed PropTech specialist investor PT1 – PropTech1 Ventures and JLL Spark, alongside existing backers BGF, Groundbreak Ventures and Techstart Ventures.

As a result of the unprecedented global shift to new ways of working, Edinburgh-based Desana has seen rapid growth since launching in 2019, now offering employers on-demand access to workspace in over 600 cities across more than 60 countries, with their team spread across the UK, USA and Canada.

BGF has backed the business since June 2021, when the company raised $4 million from a consortium of international investors to fast-track growth in the face of overwhelming market demand. This latest investment round is set to accelerate continued global growth, particularly in the US, where they see significant opportunity to expand their already impressive list of enterprise customers, which includes Github, Twilio, Sonos, Elastic and Splunk, amongst others.

Driving demand for Desana’s global offering is the ability for employers to consolidate expensive fixed-office real estate commitments, reducing workspace overheads by 65% – 95%; a critical benefit when costs are soaring and office space continues to be one of the highest business expenses.

The consolidation of real estate commitments is enabled by giving customers immediate access to the entire global flexible workspace market, on-demand, through a single interface. For the first time, companies are able to provide their employees with access to workspace anywhere in the world, in one simple click, while only paying for the exact hours that workspace is used.

Companies can also integrate their own offices onto the platform, offering a single solution to the complex task of managing global hybrid working patterns and allowing the tracking of accurate workspace data to support long-term real estate decisions. Desana offers an immediate solution to the universal corporate challenge of how to deliver hybrid and flexible working cultures at scale, as well as enabling the remote hiring strategies so in-demand from employees.

Michael Cockburn, CEO and Co-Founder of Desana commented: “We’ve 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’s still so much more to come.

“We’re very grateful to have such experienced investors that share our vision for the future of work. We’re all super excited to accelerate our growth trajectory and continue to empower companies by providing a way to use real estate that is good for their people, their business, and the planet.”

Fiona Dornan, investor at BGF, said: “We’re delighted to be providing further funding to Desana – an incredibly exciting Scottish proptech business that is responding to the global opportunities associated with hybrid working. Providing long-term, strategic support to the businesses we back is part of our DNA and so we look forward to supporting the management team as they move towards their next stage of growth.”