Singapore-headquartered PropTech start-up Propseller announced Tuesday a $12 million Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India.
The round saw participation from existing investors Hustle Fund, Iterative, and Rapzo Capital, and new investors Partech, ICCP SBI, Vulpes Ventures and Redbadge Pacific, Propseller said in a statement.
The round also saw participation of prominent PropTech founders such as Jani Rautiainen (Co-founder, PropertyGuru), Marta Higuera (Co-Founder, OpenAgent), Steffen Wicker (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Homeday), and Tushar Garg (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Flyhomes).
The funds will enable Propseller to scale its core business model, expand its line-up of services and explore overseas markets.
The 50 people company plans to hire 200 new people across the marketing, operations, product, engineering, and sales and real estate functions.
“We believe that people deserve extraordinary service when selling their home, which often represents 70 percent or more of their wealth. Yet, consumers are still dealing with property agents who close on average less than two sales transactions per year each while generally charging a two percent commission,
“Our business model addresses this industry challenge by elevating our service for consumers while charging a lower cost. Our real estate consultants each closed in 2021 25 times more transactions than a traditional agent and consumers rated our service 4.8 out of 5 across 500+ public reviews, all thanks to our technology.” said Adrien Jorge, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Propseller.
Founded in 2018, Propseller is a tech-powered real estate agency employing in-house salaried agents backed by technology and centralized operations. The model enables Propseller to control every aspect of a real estate transaction and to offer consumers the most transparent and reliable way to sell a property for a commission as low as one percent – half the market rate in Singapore.
“We are excited to back Adrien and his team as Propseller is revolutionizing the way we transact our homes in a more cost and time-efficient way, using technology and data. We’ve followed the Propseller team for more than two years now and they have demonstrated impressive resilience and growth over the years,
“We look forward to partnering and supporting them as they continue their exciting journey to transform real estate,” said Carmen Yuen, General Partner, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India.
In October 2020, Propseller raised $1.2 million seed funding from Hustle Fund, Iterative, XA Network, Rapzo Capital, Stein Jakob (Co-founder, Lazada) and Ben Neve (Founder, Dot Property).
In 2021, Propseller observed a 1,000 percent growth of its revenue year-over-year and reached profitability.
“Propseller is positioned at the cross-road of two major shifts in consumer behaviors, triggered by COVID. Firstly, the flight from offline to online for everything including high value items such as real estate. Secondly, an unprecedented work-from-home movement making millions of consumers wanting to move to a larger home than the one they are currently in,
“Over the last few years, we built the best solution to sell a home. It’s now time to open a new chapter and build the best solution not just to sell, but to move. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to democratize wealth creation while building the largest transactional real estate brand ever seen,” Adrien Jorge added.
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