Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
According to Deal Street Asia, the Vietnamese proptech startup Propzy is seeking $25 million in a Series B funding to expand on the success of its financial relationship management and property management products.
The news comes in the wake of Vietnam's first-ever Vietnam Venture Summit which saw 18 domestic and international venture capital firms committing to spend a total of $425 million dollars on Vietnamese startups over the course of the next three years.
So far, Propzy has raised a total of $12 million in funding since 2016. The latest round, a $6 million tranch from Korean VC firm Stonebridge Capital earlier this year, was a confidence vote for Propzy being the only proptech company in Vietnam to follow the hybrid online to offline (O2O) model that offers a full-stack real estate platform. Fortune Sohn, managing director of Stonebridge told Deal Street Asia about his firm's investment:
“We saw many positive similarities between one of our early investments, Korean real estate portal JikBang, and Propzy when it came to understanding the uniqueness of the market and providing Vietnamese consumers with a compelling value proposition that goes beyond just traditional classified site offerings.”
The Propzy platform allows a customer to book an on-site visit after a due diligence process matching the demand and supply is conducted. Since Propzy works directly with property owners and gets all information about assets while simultaneously conducting customer KYC and assessment, the platform can theoretically enable interactions between buyers and sellers in very short order.
According to the news from Deal Street analyst Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc, Propzy will use the next round of funding to develop financial relationship management that will include mortgage banking, besides leveraging its data.
Propzy founder and CEO John Le says the $25-million fundraising target is mainly for building up the Ho Chi Minh City-based company’s banking capabilities, and its Tenant Access Platform (TAP), which is a property management software for buildings and properties operators. He also says he expects Propzy to become profitable and start entering other markets by the second quarter of 2020.
As mentioned, over the next three years, VC firms like 500 Startups and Golden Gate Ventures have pledged hundreds of millions for startups in Vietnam. Several startups in this ecosystem of innovation are predicted to reach unicorn status soon, and Propzy is one that shows great promise. Equity analyst Nicholas Sprotes of livewire wonders if Propzy or another Vietnam innovation will be the next Gumtree or Alibaba.
