Student entrepreneurs give fellow students a ‘co-study’ space of their own

By Ng Qi Siang

/ EdgeProp Singapore |

July 30, 2021 2:07 PM SGT

Denyse Tan and Tan Peng Yu have to make sacrifices such as holding late-night work meetings that stretch to 4am (Albert Chua/EdgeProp Singapore)

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SINGAPORE (EDGEPROP) - All Singapore students know the struggle of trying to find a conducive study space. With students fleeing the tempting embrace of one’s bed or the cacophony of one’s home, cafes and libraries are often teeming with them cramming for examinations. But with demand for study spaces often far outstripping supply, finding a suitable study area can be a gamble. (See also: JustCo goes asset-light to support hybrid working)

Working adults without permanent office space can often call upon co-working space operators like WeWork and JustCo to provide a conducive working environment. But now, students can also enjoy a cosy location to work in at Afterhours, a “co-study” space located at Leng Kee Community Centre. For as low as $2 an hour, they enjoy a guaranteed seat to study at and a free flow of drinks and snacks to tide them through a study session.

The co-study space shares with a cafe — The Living Room — and operates when the latter is not in operation. Opening hours are from 5.30pm to 10pm on weekdays and Saturdays, and from 10.30am to 10pm on Sundays. All-day passes are also offered in addition to hourly rates, with these costing $8 on weekdays and Saturdays, and $12 on Sundays. Secondary school, JC and polytechnic students make up the lion’s share of users, though 10 to 20 working adults use the space each week too.

“In Singapore, space is a huge constraint. This concept is actually based on utilising space and maximising the utility of spaces,” explains co-founder Tan Peng Yu. Noting that the cafe space was underutilised when it closed in the evenings, he and co-founder Denyse Tan thought that it would be a good idea to mobilise this space to tackle the shortage of study spaces. The name “Afterhours” highlights its use of cafe space literally after operating hours.

Despite them taking the unconventional decision to start the business amid the pandemic, Denyse says the relative stability of Singapore’s Covid-19 situation has not hurt the young business too badly despite the negative effect of Phase Two (Heightened Alert). In fact, it may have reinforced the need for such services. The story of Nur Nadirah Friday, a university student who resorted to studying in the HDB corridor outside her two-room rental flat, highlights the need for solutions like Afterhours to exist, Denyse explains.

Tutoring service

But apart from the food, why should students even pay when they can use other spaces for free? “Essentially, what we do offer are power sockets and free, reliable WiFi,” says Denyse. Students can also enjoy the freedom to come and go freely from the co-study space without fearing that their seat would be taken should they leave for an extended length of time.

Offering this space is not even Afterhours’ main revenue stream — most of its income stems from offering small group tuition on its premises. With 13 tutors listed on its website, Afterhours offers upper secondary and junior college (JC) tuition in economics, mathematics, chemistry, physics and general paper from $250 to $378 per student per month. It takes a 30% cut of the tutor’s earnings for classes for more than three people, but this is subject to negotiations if the class size is smaller.

Peng Yu, who is himself one of Afterhours’ tutors, says that “onboarding” with Afterhours allows tutors to have a platform for winning clients. Freelance tutors, he highlights, often do not yet have the credibility to go out and find students on their own. He also notes that not everybody has a conducive place at home to conduct lessons; Afterhours gives them a convenient location to hold classes.

Despite obvious parallels to co-working spaces like WeWork, the co-founders assure The Edge Singapore that they have extensively researched the trials and tribulations of the co-working space. Peng Yu expressed confidence that Afterhours’ small size would allow it to develop a sense of community that he feels some other co-working spaces have lost during their rapid expansion. The firm hopes to build a “community under one roof” to bring in a regular stream of loyal users.

Starting young

The remarkable thing about co-founders Denyse and Peng Yu — who met as friends in secondary school — is their relative youth. Denyse is a second-year liberal arts student at Yale-NUS College, where she is also president of the student council. Peng Yu, who has recently completed his National Service (NS), will be starting undergraduate studies at NUS Business School in August and is currently tutoring on top of managing Afterhours before matriculating.

For Denyse and Peng Yu, starting Afterhours stemmed from a desire to work towards a goal and diving head-first into the world of entrepreneurship. “To be very honest, I think there isn’t really a right time [to start],” Peng Yu muses, noting that he was fortunate that he had sufficient spare time to devote to the project during NS. His involvement with the project stemmed from his love for teaching, which he hoped to scale up to reach more people. Denyse, a veritable go-getter, shares that she sees entrepreneurship as a platform to learn different aspects of a business and push her own limits.

Juggling these commitments with running a business demands numerous sacrifices. The duo describe late-night work meetings that stretch to 4am in the morning. Denyse and Peng Yu also had to dip into their own savings from their freelancing and tuition jobs respectively to fund the venture. They also had to coherently pitch their business model to businesses willing to share their space, a process that was sometimes intimidating at their young age.

There are more personal sacrifices too. Despite studying at a highly international liberal arts college with significant opportunities for socialising, learning and personal development, Denyse often finds herself having to sacrifice these for the sake of the business. Despite her naturally gregarious personality, she has had to take a conscious decision to prioritise her own well-being over any feelings of “fear of missing out”.

Getting sufficient rest under such a gruelling schedule is nevertheless a significant challenge for the Afterhours founders. Managing mental wellness and ensuring one’s health is a key part of building a sustainable business, with Peng Yu noting that everything falls apart without mental health. The founders recommend exercise, being present and spending time with loved ones as good de-stressors.

Not that they have to sacrifice alone, however. Both cite supportive families, who show their love through actions like preparing home-cooked meals for them. Denyse also credits a supportive Yale-NUS community for giving her confidence and a listening ear throughout her entrepreneurial journey.

The road less travelled

Now, the vast majority of Singaporean Yale-NUS College students are admitted from JCs. Denyse is unique in being one of the one in 10 students who went through the polytechnic route. Having experienced both a practical polytechnic education through her mass communications course and a more cerebral liberal arts experience, she concludes that both experiences have aided her in her entrepreneurial journey in different ways.

“Poly is really very much about practical skills,” Denyse explains. She highlights how a hands-on hotel branding project in Shanghai gave her a new perspective on how to brand Afterhours and differentiate the firm from competitors. Afterhours subsequently explored the use of new marketing techniques such as enlisting micro-influencers and social media marketing via TikTok to get its story out to the market.

On the other hand, Denyse said she finds the liberal arts curriculum at Yale-NUS more suited to strategic-level problem solving. The multi-disciplinary nature of the learning, she says, empowers her to use different lenses and approaches to solving problems. “Doing liberal arts helps me empathise with [stakeholders],” she adds, noting that Yale-NUS has helped her to establish rich networks.

Coming from JC, Peng Yu does not find much direct application of his academic knowledge to entrepreneurship. He says the experience of running a pass office as a security trooper in NS is more practically useful, as it allows him to get involved with back-end operational work like managing security systems and liaising with contractors. “It sort of taught me people’s skills as well as how a company is run,” he says.

Ultimately, however, Denyse says that what one gets from one’s life experiences is by and large determined by how one chooses to see those experiences. More important than one’s academic pathway is perhaps, according to Peng Yu, to “dare to dream” and try out ideas in the face of uncertainty. “If we didn’t try out all these ideas, maybe none of these would have been realised,” he says.

And such an attitude is perhaps all the more important when the going gets tough. “Ultimately, just tell yourself ‘so what?’ — you are here right now because you did this. So just stick to it,” she says, noting that ruminating about the past will prevent one from moving forward in spite of one’s mistakes. It is such an attitude that has helped her get through the challenging early days of Afterhours, such as when only two customers used the co-study space on opening day.

And as much as age and inexperience can prove to be a disadvantage, Peng Yu argues that it is in fact youth that gives student entrepreneurs the opportunity to take risks. “Make full use of the fact that you are still very young, and go and gather these experiences which you don’t get the chance to go through every day,” he exhorts. Whether one succeeds or fails, the sum total of these “little experiences” may in fact have a positive impact on subsequent endeavours later in life.

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