Nigerian real estate data analytics platform Estate Intel has announced a US$500,000 pre-seed funding round it raised last year, since when it has expanded into a host of other African countries.
Launched as a real estate blog in 2016, focused on highlighting major building developments in Nigeria, Estate Intel has grown into the largest real estate data source for Africa, providing information on historic rental, sale price and vacancy data for thousands of properties on the continent to help investors and advisors make sense of Africa’s opaque real estate market.
Disrupt Africa reported last week Estate Intel was one of sixty black-founded startups from across Africa selected for the second cohort of Google for Startups Black Founders Fund (BFF) for Africa, securing up to US$100,000 in equity-free funding and support to enable it to scale.
This has prompted the company to announce its pre-seed round, banked last year and led by MetaProp. The US$500,000 in funding was used by Estate Intel to expand its data footprint, which was previously predominantly Nigeria-based, to include other African countries such as Kenya, Zambia, Ivory Coast, Morocco and Ghana.
Furthermore, the company has been able to aggregate data collected into its newly relaunched informative market dashboards with subscription plans for businesses in the real estate and construction space. These market dashboards track real estate market sizes, rent and sale prices for residential, office or retail markets, pipeline and ongoing projects, with coverage in over 40 areas covered in major African cities.
The company has also recently put a new product extension, called Vesper, into public beta. Vesper is an automated real estate advisor that uses data to help the average African invest in property through quick property value estimates and accurate data to guide personal property investment.
“The fundraise has helped us expand our data coverage in new cities like Nairobi, Abidjan, Lusaka and Casablanca, in addition to the Nigerian and Ghanaian cities we are already active in,” said Dolapo Omidire, founder and CEO of Estate Intel.
“For the Google programme, we are particularly excited about what Google Cloud tools and support mean for our real estate dashboards, mapping and Vesper. We are truly committed to using data and insights to make it easier for real estate and construction companies doing business in Africa to thrive.”
