For the last couple of years, the proptech sector has been developing at an accelerated pace due to advancements in technology and the environment shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a Deloitte survey, in 2020, the global proptech sector had the same funding size as fintech did back in 2013. Outlining the compound annual growth rate of the fintech market – 44.8%, Deloitte analysts prognose a bright future for proptech in the years to come.
Today, The Recursive introduces you to 12 promising proptech startups from Greece and Bulgaria.
Bulgarian proptech startups
- OfficeRnD – a coworking and community management software that automates administrative processes. It was founded in 2015 in Sofia to provide a flexible service to office spaces and businesses and help them scale their operations. Today it serves more than 2000 working spaces in over 60 countries and has its employees on 3 different continents. The company also enables people that have chosen to work in shared spaces to access all the services offered by the venue and keep track of their membership plan.
In 2019, OfficeRnD recorded a $3M financial round, led by Flashpoint Venture Capital, and Bulgarian VC LAUNCHub Ventures. Currently, it continues scaling its operations and client portfolio. Listen to the co-founder of OfficeRnD Miroslav Miroslavov on what it takes to build a global company in The Recursive podcast.
- Propy – The California-headquartered startup was founded in 2015 by Bulgarian entrepreneurs Natalia Karayaneva and Denitza Tyufekchieva with the mission to make real estate commerce more accessible and transparent. The blockchain-based platform of Propy helps brokerage companies, clients, and property owners exchange information regarding properties. Clients can also receive, counter, reject or accept offers. The Propy platform also automates the transactions during a property purchase and supports smart contracts, thus reducing the time that is traditionally needed when concluding a deal.
Propy has secured a number of investors, raising around $15.5M (€13.2M) via an ICO, as well as several undisclosed VC rounds. It has also been supported by the VC arm of the American National Association of Realtors, Arrington XRP, EAJ (Escrow Agent Japan), and Draper Associates.
- FantasticStay – is a platform for the management of vacation rentals across different channels, such as Booking.com and Airbnb. It allows property managers to control all their property listings via a single dashboard. The platform also allows for synchronizing reservations, onboarding, keeping track of maintenance personnel, and marketing. Recently, FantasticStay raised €1.3M in a round led by the Bulgarian VC New Vision 3 (NV3), which invested €770K, in partnership with the angel investor Velizar Velichkov and previous investors.
- Cowork7/24 – based both in Sofia and Istanbul, Cowork7/24 has grown to become an international company that offers access to digital nomads, remotely-working professionals, and traveling people access to the most suitable coworking space among 261 flexible offices on two continents. The specially designed city coworking pass of the company gives access to users to all the coworking spaces in Cowork7/24’s network without having to pay extra. The city coworking pass comes with three variations: fan, regular, and ultimate, depending on how many hours of credit a user will get.
- Estate assistant – established in 2014, the company has developed a cloud-based platform for real estate agencies to help them access and manage their pipeline and deals from multiple devices. The platform offers data hosting – storing of photos and information for various properties, as well as a range of other services, including data synchronization, marketing, and data analysis.
- Homeheed – The AI-powered Real Estate aggregator of Homeheed enables users to search for relevant offers for renting or buying a property in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The AI-based software constantly aggregates data from real estate websites to provide real-time accurate information about the offerings in Sofia. What’s more, Homeheed has direct integration with 107 brokerage agencies that send all their ads directly. The business model of the company is subscription-based – users get one-month free trial and have to choose between two options afterward, depending on whether they would like to take advantage of the full range of services, offered by Homeheed. These include morning emails with the latest offers, help via Viber from a consultant, as well as scheduling viewing arrangements.
- Fitsys – the sport and wellness club management software Fitsys is an integrated solution for managing dermatology clinics, salons, spas, and sports clubs. The platform can manage various business operations, such as the slots for working with customers, internal communication, warehouse, and inventory. The platform helps owners review current resources and account for expenses while enabling employees to track their calendars and accept reservations from clients. For the past couple of years, Fitsys has grown to offer automated marketing services, including viber and push notifications for birthdays, welcome emails, feedback, booked or canceled time, and promotions.
Greek proptech startups
- Blueground is a proptech rental company with a platform where you can book flexible stays (30 days and longer) from a network of thousands of fully furnished, quality homes around the world. It is also the Greek challenger for a unicorn company. After raising $140 million in an equity funding round led by existing investor Laurence Tosi’s WestCap Group in September, Blueground is now valued at $750 million. Other investors included Geolo Capital, VentureFriends, and Prime Ventures. Previously, Blueground has raised a $50 million Series B round in 2019 from Prime Ventures and WestCap.
- Prosperty – The platform of Prosperty aims to create a digital-first experience for property owners, buyers, and tenants. Its centralized platform allows for rent and sale transactions of properties, enabling prospective buyers to participate in virtual tours and 3D-assisted presentations. It digitalizes the property identification documents, as well as the online services surrounding the technical, legal, and notary procedures during the real estate transaction. In July 2021, the Greek startup secured €3.3M to expand operations internationally and increase its unique user base that exceeded 100 000 people on a monthly basis.
- Syncbnb – Syncbnb is a SaaS solution that allows vacation rental home owners to list their property on multiple channels, thus eliminating the problem with double bookings and allowing for centralized management. The platform synchronizes all the bookings for a particular property across different booking channels, allowing for calendar updates and synchronization. Syncbnb can also duplicate existing listings to new channels, thus minimizing the burden of having to do it manually. The startup has been backed by local VC Velocity Partners.
- GuestFlip – the Athens-based startup has developed a reputation management tool that enables hotels to keep track of their Internet reviews and raise guest satisfaction, increasing their occupancy rates and the number of direct bookings. In the company’s platform, hotel management can view customer reviews from over 30 platforms, monitor reputation performance based on segmented analysis that includes more than 200 categories, such as room and breakfast quality. Hotel employees can automatically respond to their guest reviews, track competitors’ performance and weak points, and access reports about their online presence and customer satisfaction. In 2019, the company was backed with €200K in a pre-seed round, led by Metavallon VC.
- SensorFlare – the IoT platform of the startup enables users to control all the smart devices in a user’s home, no matter if they are produced by different manufacturers. The platform can be accessed from multiple devices to help users manage their smart home devices. Additionally, it analyzes user interactions and proposes intelligence solutions. As of now, SensorFlare has reached agreements with several producers of smart devices for offering the functionality for their devices. These include the smart wearable company Fitbit that was acquired by Google and Canadian ecobee that has developed the first smart wi-fi thermostat.
