Headquartered in Singapore, startup proptech Propseller on a mission to make real estate transactions more efficient and data-driven for sellers and buyers alike. Its platform can tell users how likely it is to convert step by step. Propseller today announced it has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India.
Other investors participating in the round include returning backers Hustle Fund, Iterative and Rapzo Capital, along with new investors Partech, ICCP SBIT, Vulpes Ventures and Redbadge Pacific. It also includes some well-known proptech founders, such as Jani Rautiainen of PropertyGuru, Marta Higuera of OpenAgent, Steffen Wicker of Homeday and Tushar Garg of Flyhomes.
Founded in 2018, Propseller will use Series A to expand its business model, expand its services (including adding services such as migration) and penetrate overseas markets. It currently has about 50 employees, including 20 salaried real estate agents (or consultants, as the startup calls it) and plans to hire 200 more for its marketing teams, operations, products, engineering and sales and real estate.
By using technology to make the real estate buying/selling process more efficient, Propsellers are also able to charge only 1% commission, as opposed to 2% for traditional real estate agents, who Founder and CEO Adrien Jorge told TechCrunch.
Jorge became interested in real estate while growing up in Nice, France. He said his family members all became engineers or real estate agents, and he noticed that the latter group made more money than engineers. Curious, Jorge joined his mother’s real estate company at the age of 14 and stayed there until the age of 22.
One of his reasons is that the traditional real estate agency model is difficult to scale and very manual, and often subject to hard-to-justify commissions. Instead, Jorge continued to work for technology companies, including six years at Groupon, where he held positions including general manager for Southeast Asia.
While looking for investment opportunities, Jorge experienced trouble buying real estate in Southeast Asia. For example, he says that real estate prices are often high, but the service from traditional brokerage firms often leaves much to be desired. He attributes this to the fragmentation of Southeast Asia’s property market, with 200,000 agents across Southeast Asia closing on average just two deals per year.
As a result, Jorge saw an opportunity to build a platform to help people sell their homes more quickly, with transparency and with the least hassle.
The reason why Propseller calls consultants to its licensed real estate agents is because the company’s automation gives them time to work on client relationships. On average, Propseller consultants close about 55 sales per year, which also means they generate more revenue.
“We are very likely the only company in Singapore that tells you the expected conversion rate of leads coming from PropertyGuru or 99.co,” said Jorge. This means that once a lead is generated, the lead can be tracked from start to finish, so sellers and consultants know the likelihood of a successful close at each step of the process.
Views usually take place offline, but Propseller also generates video and VR views for each property. Merchants can stay on top of the process with a dashboard that shows them what channels their products are being distributed on, requests generated, views, and scheduled offers.
The COVID pandemic has made people willing to buy bigger fare items online, and many will continue to work from home looking for a bigger fortune. As the pandemic subsides, Jorge believes these trends will persist.
The company’s main competitor is 34,000 independent agents in Singapore, who own about 99% of the real estate market. Proptech’s competitors include Own My Home and Blue Nest in Singapore, Red Fin in the US and Flyhomes to a certain extent, Jorge said.
Propseller is setting itself apart as an end-to-end real estate transaction platform, Jorge said. “We broke down each step of the process, recorded everything that happened, and we were able to capture data that no one else had and determine how to optimize that process for the best results. “
In a prepared statement, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India managing partner Carmen Yuen said that Propseller is “revolutionizing the way we trade our homes more cost and time efficient, using technology and data. We have been following the Propseller team for over two years now and they have demonstrated impressive resilience and growth over the years. “
