Founder and CEO of JustCo – KONG Wan Sing started JustCo in 2015 with over 15 years of experience as a property and real estate veteran.

Wan Sing’s vision for JustCo is to become a leading player in the shared coworking space market, providing flexible, collaborative and creative spaces to businesses of all shapes and sizes, including Fortune 500 companies, small and medium enterprises and independent entrepreneurs.

Wan Sing discovered the entrepreneurship streak in him early in his professional life. As a fresh graduate out from New York University, Wan Sing traded an attractive opportunity to work at Goldman Sachs New York, to start his own finance firm in Boston. Wan Sing then joined the family business Sing Group in Malaysia, within the real estate division, and spent seven years to learn the real estate business from the ground-up. Thereafter, he took a role as Senior Associate Director with Mapletree Investments, the real estate arm of Temasek Holdings in Singapore, for a total of five years.

With the entrepreneurial streak still running deep in his veins, Wan Sing took a leap of faith in 2011 to set up JustOffice, providing traditional serviced offices, before starting JustCo in 2015, the first shared workspace concept which proved to be an instant hit with start-ups and enterprises alike.

Since then, JustCo has enjoyed tremendous success. By “knocking down” the walls of the traditional offices to create open and collaborative workspaces, he has given visionary businesses the flexibility, autonomy and room to evolve. JustCo currently operates 20 coworking centres across Southeast Asia, with a strong community of over 12,000 members and a network of long-term partners which offer community members a host of services to help them access regional markets, gain business insights, and enjoy preferential packages for business services.

“The meaningful part of a coworking space is the community, the conversations made, and the connections established. JustCo’s vision is to ‘make work better, together!’ and we aim to foster a community of talented and like-minded individuals and businesses, where members can ultimately tap into to seek new connections, explore business opportunities and experience the benefits and network effect of the JustCo community,” says Kong Wan Sing.

It is under Wan Sing’s leadership that JustCo has become the leading provider and operator of shared coworking spaces in Southeast Asia. JustCo is set to dominate Asia by way of entry into key strategic cities, with an aim to operate 100 centres in the region by end of 2020.

Key Milestones of JustCo
As a visionary, Wan Sing has transformed JustCo into a major player in Southeast Asia in a short period of time.

In May 2018, JustCo was appointed by American multinational conglomerate, Verizon Communications, to help curate and manage Verizon’s first Asia innovation-community space, named as Verizon Innovation Community managed by JustCo. Housed within Verizon’s Singapore headquarters in Ocean Financial Centre, this innovation hub aims to connect a vibrant tech community, acting as a breeding ground for creative collaboration and mutual learning.

This first-in-Asia initiative sees a shift in the relationship between local innovation networks and big corporates. The launch of the Verizon Innovation Community has given JustCo the opportunity to apply its community management expertise, workplace technology and customized programmes to facilitate access between the tech communities and Verizon.

In July 2018, JustCo launched Singapore’s first coworking centre in a shopping mall in the Marina Centre Precinct. Located within Marina Square and as one of its anchor tenants, JustCo centre spreads across a single floor plate of about 60,000 square feet and estimates to house more than 1,000 members. It expects to attract retailers, creative personalities, as well as potential clientele from the surrounding corporate of offices and hotels.

The demand and roles of coworking spaces and landlords have evidently shifted in recent years. It is prevalent that shopping malls are now learning to focus on shoppers’ experience, by incorporating more entertainment and services in the retail environment. This has also helped to increase foot traffic in the retail industry that is slowing down in recent years.