PropTech In Africa // Top 12 Companies Giving Real Estate Sector A Face-Lift

This article explores some of the leading PropTech In Africa companies in terms of the funding they have received and how they are making use of technology to shake up things in the real estate space.

Even though real estate, like other traditional industries, has not changed very much in decades, the sector is beginning to get a face-lift, and we are excited to see companies thriving under the new technology wave.

The PropTech component of the real-estate sector alone is anticipated to yield billions in investment and user interest. It is rapidly gaining attention across the globe, with traditional real estate being forced to innovate and embrace technology where face-to-face interactions have been curbed and altered significantly.

Proptech is simply the acronym used to describe any technology for the real estate space. It is the application of information technology and platform economics to real estate markets.

This can span software (property portals like Rightmove and Zoopla are considered proptech software!), hardware i.e use of sensors, materials, in cases where special bricks are being developed to act as batteries for solar panels.

Globally, there are now more than 6,000 proptech businesses and, Statista, a global data platform, reports that global PropTech investment, has increased from $2bn in 2013 to $18bn in 2018. 

But has this trend been reflected in the Africa property market? Research published in Knight Frank’s, The Africa Report, observed that “what started as a trickle through the introduction of online search platforms has become a wave of disruptive and cutting-edge technologies that continue to improve both transparency and efficiency”. 

One of the key drivers to this is the maturing millennial market. With technology, millennials want everything on their fingertips. Millennials use smartphones to find everything from a parking space to dinner and even a romantic partner. 

As they enter a stage in their life where they seek new property – either to live in or for setting up their own business – millennials are more comfortable trying out new tech products that fit more seamlessly into their lives.

According to the Startup List platform, about 50 proptech startups in Africa have cumulatively raised funding worth USD 47.9million in the last couple of months

With this in mind, we take a look at the companies innovating in the PropTech space,  the funding stages that they have closed and are slowly but surely getting into the Proptech Global Space

Eden Life

Eden Life the company which started in 2019 is redesigning the service industry by allowing busy professionals the opportunity to get their food cooked and delivered fresh, as well as laundry, and home cleaning services with no friction.

2 years after starting the company with a $600,000 pre-seed funding from family and friends, Eden Life is positioned to scale and consolidate its market share through a $1.4million dollar seed funding they raised last month.

This funding round was pioneered by Local Globe, a U.K.-based venture capital firm, while Africa-focused VCs Samurai Incubate, Future Africa, Village Global, Rising Tide Africa, and Enza Capital also participated.

Con Digital

Launched in January of 2019, ConDigital digitises the process of construction project management for contractors, consultants and owners. 

Among the services it provides are data calculation, processing and reporting; schedule, resource and financial management; communication channels; centralised cloud file storage; and analytics.

ConDigital took on US$25,000 in funding from The Baobab Network after being accepted into its accelerator programme in 2019, and has now raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding. 

Top 10 Organizations that finance and fund businesses in Africa

Led by an investor in the United States (US) and also including angel investors from East Africa, Europe and Asia, the round will help the startup cement its presence in Ethiopia and begin to expand across the East African region.

Estate Intel

Estate Intel is a data platform that helps organisations interacting with the real estate and construction industry make faster and smarter decisions. 

The research and data company which started as a blog in 2016, joined Metaprop, the largest Proptech Accelerator Program in the world. 

The 22-week program, which commenced on the 13th of September, is focused on driving business growth and accelerated market penetration.

As part of the program, Estate Intel will receive up to $250,000 funding, which was part of a larger capital raise exercise that recently closed. According to the Founder-Dolapo Omidire, the funding will help the company to scale and achieve its goal of becoming the source of truth for African real estate data and insights.

Flow

Flow-based in South Africa is a startup that rewards tenants for good behaviour. Founded by Daniel Levy, Gil Sperling and Jonathan Liebmann, Flow rewards tenants for registering, adding their property details, paying their rent on time, and looking after their homes.

In 2019, Flow raised US$1.47million in funding, with half coming from South African venture capital firm Kalon Venture Partners and a half from CRE Venture Capital.

14 Trees

14Trees, a LafargeHolcim joint venture with CDC Group, the UK’s publicly owned impact investor, is another company in the real estate making use of the property technology through deploying 3D printing technology at scale to build affordable and low-carbon housing and schools in Africa, 

The company who are our member at Nairobi Garage // Karen, started by deploying the first 3D school in Malawi . With its record speed of construction and optimised material use, this technology reduces the carbon footprint for building new homes by up to 70%. 

Pioneering this technology in schools for the first time, 14Trees aims to address the country’s chronic infrastructure shortage while creating skilled local jobs.

Rent Small Small

Rent Small Small was Africa’s first proptech company to join Techstars Accelerator, Canada.

Rent Small Small started in 2018 and provides people with the opportunity for monthly rental payment which is in sync with the wage system in Nigeria. 

According to the company, they have helped renters save over USD 1million on legal and agency fees with over 12,000 monthly stays across 18 locations in Lagos State, Nigeria. 

Spleet

Spleet is a rental platform that currently provides flexible rental payment opportunities to people in Lagos, Nigeria.

The company which started in 2017 has been offering an all-bill-inclusive flexible rental experience with a mission to build the future of structured and equitable access to housing; what it describes as a future where everyone gets a fair chance at efficient and affordable living spaces.

Spleet was the first African Startup to make it to the 22-week Metaprop Accelerator program which hosted other startups including Estate Intel and 7 others across the globe. 

The company will also be getting up to $250,000 funding from Metaprop. In an earlier article, the CEO-Akintola Adesanmi said that the program will help the company accelerate its growth as well as shine a light on the proptech startup ecosystem in Africa, even as they plan to expand into other cities across the continent.

Obodo

Obodo works with residential landlords to streamline the rental process by taking on the administrative load from landlords and managing their rental properties.

Obodo provides landlords with the following services: Lease and tenant management, Property repairs and general maintenance, ongoing legal services, tenant invoicing, payment tracking and payment collection from tenants and handle new tenant screening

In August Obodo launched a pilot product called Kijiji that is a property management tool for real estate agents and individual landlords to help them easily and affordably manage their rental units.

Yahshud Property Investment

Yahshud is a real estate crowdfunding platform that is focused on providing a platform for small investors with limited capital to add real estate to their investment portfolio and participate in the typically sophisticated market with high barriers to entry. 

Although Platform Capital has a Nigerian origin, the Venture Capital firm has expanded within and outside the continent with investments in Mexico, Ghana, and many other countries around the world. 

Bongalow

Bongalow is a mobile-powered home financing marketplace that enables Africans at home and abroad shop for the best home loan to purchase their desired property. The startup’s mobile-powered home financing platform enables aspiring homeowners to save towards a down payment, shop for a home loan, and access Bongalow’s rent-to-own financing facilities.

The undisclosed investment from UNCOVERED FUND is part of a wider seed round that also includes Future Africa, Kepple Africa Ventures, ARM, Magic Fund, a bank CEO in Nigeria, and a host of other angel investors. 

The full size of the round is yet to be confirmed, but all capital is being used to further solidify Bongalow’s presence in the market.

Crowd Prop

Crowdprop is a platform that enables individuals to invest in real estate through the form of crowdfunding. The startup aims at bridging the gap in the market by providing more people with the opportunity to invest in property.

Crowdprop uses independent experts to analyse every property and undergoes a strict screening process. This process ensures that only safe and qualified investments are listed on the platform.

The property is divided into various shares so investors are able to invest in and own a portion of the property from as little as USD1000. The investor will own the property collectively with other investors. 

Investors are given shares according to their proportion of ownership and rental income is paid into the investor’s Crowdprop wallet which can be withdrawn or reinvested at any time.

Once the investment term has come to an end the property will be sold and the investor will receive their portion of the proceeds from the sale.

Instant Property

Instant Property offers Software as a service to the Real Estate Industry empowering sector players with both technology and data to help them with their digital transformation. 

The technology suite consists of 1) Online Real Estate Auction Aggregator Portal 2) Online Commercial and Industrial Vacancy Listing Portal 3) Industry Data Services and software branding and customisation services.

As of 2019, Instant Property had positioned itself at the center of the online commercial property sector in SA and Africa with over 9 million m2 of commercial property space listed and over 2.5 million m2 of office, warehouse and retail space currently available for sale and to let.

The power of their marketplace stems from their innovative technology’s ability to service tenants, brokers & landlords through their proprietary big data commercial property platform with a built-in CRM system and machine learning capabilities uniquely designed for commercial property management, rentals, sales and a market first online and mobile app auction platform across Africa.

Landlords and large brokerages have the added possibility of white-labelling and customising the Instant Property suite of commercial property technologies delivering a robust, centralised data-rich property management & online listing environment.

It is just interesting to see how the real estate space is changing and with new apartments coming every day in cities like Nairobi, this creates even bigger opportunities for the proptech entrepreneurs. In the coming years, we will probably see more growth happen and probably take up the fintech space in the funding space.