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bq | SMBs+ENTREPRENEURSHIP I VIRTUAL OFFICES

QATAR

HOT-DESKING
& VIRTUAL SPACES

How to get around high business rentals in Qatar

By Ira Pavaki, Doha

Qatar is not the easiest place in the region to do business. Apart

from cost of setting up and procedural issues, finding start-upfriendly rentals is close to impossible.
None of these issues, however, are exclusive to Qatar. With needs come options, and desks-for-rent and co-working spaces are finding more traction in the
country. While informal sharing arrangements are aplenty, a few players have
gone a step further.
Evgenia Berestneva, director of 7ayak Hub, the latest entrant, says the need
has been so great that even without investing in marketing yet, they have received
a lot of interest just word of mouth. Surprisingly, we got more response than we
expected - many people apparently are already familiar with the concept of coworking, some were looking for such places in Doha, some even had similar ideas
to start one.
Weve looked up at different statistics of entrepreneurship growth and development in Qatar, and research findings among youth in Qatar. There are constantly growing numbers of entrepreneurs, freelancers, home-based businesses.
All of them essentially need a space to work, but mostly, they all need a space to
collaborate a physical space where they can meet each other, share the challenges they face, learn and support each other. We felt that it's the right time to
start, because many co-working spaces started to appear in Gulf region, especially in the UAE.

www.bqdoha.com

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Business Centres in Qatar at a glance

Globex "The Gate"Doha offers 90 fully furnished and
equipped offices (in multiple formats) over 2,800 sq. m of
space with flexible lease terms from one day to five years.
It is located on the:
7th and 8th floors of Tower II of The Gate mall
For more details visit www.salamglobexqatar.com
7ayak Hub is the first co-working space in Qatar, designed to support the community of change makers and
scale up their work through access to collaborative network, educational content and creative space. They offer
70 desks at their location:
Al Idreesi Street, 12Madinat Khalifa South, Immigration
Round About, Doha
For more details visit www.7ayakhub.me

Servcorp, an international player, provides a far more

formal facility. Its Senior Manager, Fabienne Hajar, says
most of its clients are SMEs (small and medium enterprises)
and international companies who seek local presence. The
rentals also tend to be for a longer tenure. Most of the clients rent a serviced office or virtual office for an average of
two years before they start expanding their business without
investing in space and overheads. It saves money without
cutting corners and helps the client focus on their business
and generate more revenue.
For 7ayak Hub, the clientele is an interesting mix. We
get requests from different kinds of businesses and start-ups
at different stages of development. We don't focus on certain fields, welcoming everybody and, depending on their
needs, finding resources to support them among our network
of organizations and individuals. The same goes for usage
of working space; at the moment there are no criteria to get
in, even though there are plans to implement it in the future
to make sure those start-ups and SMEs who are most in need
can access the service, says Berestneva.
At present, they host eight companies, and 30 odd other
individuals, which means about 40 people use the facilities
on a daily basis. Those 40 also usually hold meetings with
externals at our place, so daily footfall is, probably, double.
Overall capacity of the building is about 70 working individual spaces, so we are working on renovation to create more
working areas, so we can welcome more people.
Berestneva sees their offering as a niche. We are the
first co-working space in town and there is no other company, which provides the same combination of services as we
do. Talking only about working space, there are few other
office providers as Servcorp, Regus and Globex, who offer
services of virtual office, hot desk in shared space and private small offices. They usually have high standards and high
prices as well, so it's becoming inaccessible for freelancers,
start-ups and SMEs. And this is where we come in. We have
fast internet, free tea and coffee, printer/scan/copy services, so even those who used to work in coffee-shops, would

Regus Business Centre has fully furnished and ready-togo executive suites, meeting rooms and office space for rent
at three locations in Qatar
63 Airport Road, 1st Floor, Umm Ghuwailina Zone 27, Doha
D Ring Road, Al Mataar, Al Qadeem District, Doha
Al Fardan Office Tower, 8th, 9th and 14th Floors, Al Funduq
61 West Bay, Doha
For more details visit www.regus.qa
Servcorp has serviced and virtual offices as well as casual
meeting rooms to rent at three locations in Qatar
Levels 14 & 15, Commercial Bank Plaza, West Bay, Doha
Level 22, Tornado Tower, West Bay, Doha
Level 21, Burj Doha,West Bay, Doha
For more details visit www.servcorp.com.qa

rather use the hot desk here.

Apart from the working space itself, we invest a lot of
time in facilitating learning between our residents, as well as
organizing networking and educational events ourselves.
So, they barter services, consult each other, brainstorm or
get feedback for their new product or campaigns, they cooperate - which rarely happens in usual business centers or
coffee-shops.
Even in comparison to government-run incubation centres, Berestneva feels they score better. You can find many
of them and many have really good supporting programs
and products, from funding to consultancy to business advice
to incubation etc. Our advantage is that we are a private
company and it makes us more flexible and accessible as opposed to those funded by the government. We also believe
that strength lies in collaboration, not in competition, so we
are planning for strategic partnerships with different organizations in the so-called entrepreneurship eco-system to be
able to offer better support to start-ups and SMEs in Qatar.
7ayak Hub are also planning to open more spaces and
currently looking for the right locations to ensure their costs
don't rise super high, so they can still be accessible to all
start-ups, freelancers, SMEs.
The market for such facilities is only set to grow in Qatar.
Says Hajjar, I believe that there is limited supply for smaller
offices ranging from 100 to 250 sq. m particularly in prime
Grade A buildings, given the floor plates of a lot of the available buildings are designed for single floor tenants.
The office occupancy rates across Doha are currently 75 percent, with newer buildings taking longer to lease,
given the oversupplied market. However, despite Dohas
office market being currently oversupplied, it is becoming more challenging to find space for smaller occupiers.
Which gives Servcorp a big advantage.
The rentals of commercial space and residential units
are likely to see steady growth over the coming months of
course depending on the political and economic situation in
the region.

DECEMBER 2014