CASAFARI, Portugal-based proptech company, has raised €5 million in a seed financing round led by Lakestar and joined by real estate investment fund Round Hill Capital to pursue expansion across Europe.
CASAFARI indexes all real estate market information available online from agencies and private owners in a single platform, eliminating duplicates and offering agents a complete and updated overview of the market. Founded in 2018, CASAFARI uses machine learning and big data operations to ‘make the real estate market more transparent and efficient’ by building the cleanest and most complete database in the world. Thus far, the startup says it has monitored 4 million unique properties and 15 million listings, is actively used by more than 7,000 real estate agents and has grown annual revenues by more than 600 percent.
CASAFARI, which is headed by entrepreneurs Mila Suhareva, Nils Henning and Mitya Moskalchuk, says it will use the proceeds of the funding round to expand its team (currently 70 people), build fresh custom applications and boost its internationalisation efforts.
Despite the significant uptick in the number of Proptech investment deals, global investment in real estate technology declined to $9.6 billion experiencing a 23.7% year-over-year drop in total volume last year.
The average amount invested declined by nearly 32% to $25 billion from $36.3 billion in 2017, according to the 2018 year-end PropTech funding report published by CREtech, a U.S.-based commercial real estate technology event and research platform.