Contxto – Get this: proptech Alude was launched in Brazil in 2019 and its team currently consists of nine people (three of which are the co-Founders). Nonetheless, it’s attracted big names in venture capital for its seed round.
Today (30) the real estate startup announced it closed US$3.3 million. And interestingly, Allude had multiple round leaders: Silicon Valley’s Ribbit Capital and Y Combinator as well as Global Founders Capital and MAYA Capital.
These VC hotshots were joined by angel investors including the founders of fintechs Stone, Plaid, and Brex, as well as founders from proptech Viva Real, video game startup Wildlife Studios, consumer platform Ingresse, and Hugo Barra, the VP of Facebook Reality Labs.
Funds in hand, the startup now plans to hire more developers as well as scale its product, a platform for brokering property deals.
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Alude brings data to real estate in Brazil
Entrepreneurs/friends Jota Junior, Alef Miranda, and Alexandre Dubugras put their heads together to launch Alude last year. The startup then went on to participate in Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 Batch.
The startup’s platform offers property brokers a database which has a reported 332,000 property owners registered and looking to sell or rent their real estate. This information can then be segmented by city or neighborhood.
With all that info mapped out, brokers can reach out to owners.
But Alude wants to make brokers’ lives even easier with other tools. Its platform can reportedly collect the necessary documents, verify their validity, and e-sign agreements.
Alude takes a different proptech path
When it comes to these types of platforms, my first assumption is that it works as an SaaS or perhaps as a pay-per-deal type of deal. But Alude chose another approach.
Instead, it offers insurance to property renters through the brokers who close agreements over its system. Meanwhile, it’s free to use for the brokers themselves.
“An average real estate company is not accustomed to investing in technology,” Dubugras told Exame. “[For this reason] it’s easier to distribute software if it’s for free. And since the tenant’s documentation is already on our platform, buying insurance is even faster.”
It’s definitely a different take on turning for profit and the startup says it may scale into reselling other goods to users such as furniture or internet packages.
Alude clearly wants to simplify the real estate process from start to finish. However it aims to do so without actually replacing brokers as other proptechs do. Instead, realtors become vendors on the startup’s behalf.
But it’s only fair. They’re getting free software after all.
Related articles: Tech and startups from Brazil!
-ML
