South African property startup Flow, which has developed an app that rewards tenants for good behaviour, has raised a ZAR20 million (US$1.47 million) funding round to fuels its growth and add to its service.
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.
It has now secured ZAR20 million in funding, with half coming from South African venture capital firm Kalon Venture Partners and half from CRE Venture Capital.
Funding will be used to accelerate the development of the app, fuelling growth and increasing the base of tenants already using Flow, as well as to increasing the range of rewards available.
Sperling, chief executive officer (CEO) of Flow, said the property industry, locally and globally, was one of the few verticals which has not seen much innovation, making it an industry ripe for disruption.
“Compared with any other industry, the property industry – and in particular the rental market – is archaic and disconnected. There’s also a massive paradigm shift in how people should rent which is inspired and driven by their lifestyle choices, and is something proptech could and should leverage big time. People are used to being connected all the time and transacting digitally, in real-time; and they want transparency in their dealings with companies, including their landlords,” he said.
“These are some of the key factors that inspired the creation of Flow. Through scaling with technology and economies of scale, we can revolutionise the economics of rent, providing a more seamless experience and more value to tenants.”
Kalon Venture Partners CEO Clive Butkow said the decision to invest in Flow was strongly motivated by the quality of the entrepreneurs and the proven track record they have. This combined with the tech offering they have built made investing an easy decision.
“At Kalon Venture Partners we invest in technologies that are disrupting their respective industries and have large target addressable markets. Flow passed both these criteria with flying colors and also passed our most important investment criteria, which is having the ‘A’ team. The three founders have all built successful businesses, which is quite rare in South Africa, and have the ‘execution intelligence’ to grow a product into a large profitable enterprise,” he said.
