Serviced office space provider, Workstyle Africa, has partnered with SNDBX International, a business growth ecosystem, to open five one-stop-shop entrepreneurship centres and workspaces in East Africa.
Workstyle Africa builds and manages beautifully designed, high end, flexible workspaces at competitive pricing, while enabling companies to manage new hybrid-work models and enhancing their employees’ work environment. This partnership is aimed at giving entrepreneurs and SMEs within these spaces timely and personalised access to round the clock business experts to support their growth.
“Each Workstyle location with a SNDBX wing will have more than 20 resident business support experts including finance, human resources, tax, legal, branding, marketing, debt management, innovation, governance and risk management among others, which will enhance our flexible office space value proposition as we expand across East Africa and beyond. The initial investment will be over Sh250 million to enhance our network and member experience” said Ebenezer Degu, Chief Executive Officer, Workstyle Africa.
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Workstyle to create presence across Africa
Workstyle is targeting to open more centres in key East African cities, and launch in South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria.
SNDBX Chief Executive Officer Joram Mwinamo said the SNDBX is a first of its kind in the world, developed over 10 years of working with entrepreneurs. It is designed to ensure sustainable models for business support through a proven methodology localise for the African ecosystem.
“We give you holistic, collaborative, complete, long term, practical, contextualised, affordable solutions for your growth needs as an entrepreneur, no matter where you are, through an army of experts who empathise with your needs, understand your journey and have the specific solution for you to build unique and profitable businesses that are scalable, and keep you accountable to your goals. With this partnership, entrepreneurs will be able to access discounted space at Workstyle, providing them an environment filled with SMEs, investors, and corporates alongside SNDBX. This partnership will include Workstyle managing the soon to be launched SNDBX Mombasa which involves our partners and Investors, Close the Gap (CTG) ” Mwinamo explained.
The SNDBX concept uses a collaborative model to help companies grow exponentially by offering the customised and targeted professional services. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, businesses also need a whole host of support services to enable them to grow and scale their operations.
“We could have chosen to operate as 33 singular entities but instead we have chosen to move with the power and force of the village! The Power of the Village is undisputed but this power is felt based on each expert and their teams involvement working as part of the SNDBX Village,” he added.
Tough times for SMEs
The latest data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicate that about 400,000 SMEs close shop annually in the country with 46 percent of them dying in the first year of establishment. Those who close attribute it to making losses, poor investment choices and market saturation.
In the last 3 years’ of operations, SNDBX has so far helped businesses create an average of 9 full time jobs per company that has come through its doors, with 90% of the experts’ clients reporting improved business performance.
These businesses also reported 39.89% average revenue growth in 2021. SNDBX has also grown its network from roughly 2,000 businesses to 7704 collectively on its SME client database.
Kenya’s SME sector constitutes 98 percent of the businesses in Kenya and provides 30 percent of annual employment.
