Singapore-based real estate platform 99.co has raised US$15.2M in their Series B funding round led by MindWorks Venture and Allianz X.
The round also received significant participation from existing investors East Ventures, Sequoia India and Eduardo Saverin.
With the new funds, 99.co said it will “build and extend its reach in its current core markets of Singapore and Indonesia, [and also] launch new markets”.
On top of that, they’re planning to extend into a new vertical of offering property-related financial products.
Founded by Darius Cheung, Yan Phun and Conor McLaughlin in 2013, 99.co brought simplicity and reliability to the property-search experience through “design-centric technology and data for end users and agents”.
In a press release, the real estate platform said its total user base has grown by 38 times in the last two years, “from around 100,000 users per month in 2017, to around 3.8 million users in 2019”.
Traffic to their website also grew by about 5 times in the same period. Coming from 450,000 visits a month in 2017, monthly visits have since surpassed 2 million from February 2019 onwards.
Tackling Financial Needs In Property
With Allianz’s digital investment arm as a new major backer, 99.co will get to work with them for their foray into financial services.
“Being one of the three largest financial services in the world, [Allianz] brings immense experience, capabilities and network that would be an important strategic anchor in our expansion into financial services in real estate,” said Darius.
He also added that they are excited to learn from Hong Kong-based MindWorks which has “one of the best vantage points of the developments from China market”.
Darius further shared with Vulcan Post that they will be exploring products “related to mitigating risk and financing large purchases”.
In other words, 99.co users could soon expect a host of insurance, lending and mortgage options. However, there’s no projected timeline just yet.
He said the firm is currently in a “customer discovery phase”, where they take an extensive process to learn about what solutions their users need before they develop new products.
With their understanding of user behaviour on their platform, 99.co will “take [their] user pain points to Allianz”, and both companies will workshop the issues together and pilot their solutions.
“Once the pilot is over, we intend to roll them out to market through our distribution network,” said Darius.
As for expansion plans, 99.co is currently in the midst of evaluating which market to tackle first, between Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.
Featured Image Credit: Global Indonesian Voices
