MHub began in 2015 with 3 people, a simple idea, and no funding.
They saw a problem they needed to solve in the Malaysian real estate industry: the long and arduous property transaction process.
There was little to no real-time visibility of data in terms of project details, unit availability listings, buyers’ creditworthiness, and financing options, for examples.
At the same time, buyers, real estate agents, property developers, banker and lawyers would communicate manually.
This meant that a typical sales process could take 6-9 months, which was too long.
What MHub is able to offer now is a family of client software and services to facilitate end-to-end property transactions, connecting everyone involved in the process.
“At its base, MHub digitalises the entire manual process using different apps for different stakeholders to speed up and simplify, safely,” co-founder Jason Ding told Vulcan Post.
“Through this holistic approach, we’ve effectively brought down the process from 9 months to 1 month.”
They’ve Got Numbers To Show
With its core focus on the B2B market, its starting point for clients is property developers.
“Unlike traditional property listing portals that often have outdated or double listings, developers use MHub as a single source of truth,” Jason shared.
To date, he stated the platform has close to 700 projects with a total of 170k units.
“We’ve captured bookings for 64k units with a total Sales and Purchase Agreement (SPA) value of RM93 billion.”
Over 80 developers of varying size that sell locally and globally have put their trust in MHub. Jason added, “We work with close to 90 law firms, 2k bankers, and 4k real estate agents.”
On the other end, they have about 10k users.
One App Wasn’t Enough
The whole problem of a lengthy home-buying process seems to have persisted for years. Why then have the key players involved not taken much initiative in speeding up the process themselves?
Jason replied, “It’s true that while real estate is the world’s largest asset class, it’s also one of the slowest to adopt technology. It’s because there are many different parties involved in a highly multi-regulated industry.”
“There have been many initiatives but usually it’s been focused on just one aspect of the journey, when a holistic approach is required.”
Hence, instead of building a single app, MHub built a suite of 10 apps to serve and connect key players.
“Also, we believe the initiative needs to be driven by a neutral party rather than property developers or banks. This position allows for wide adoption so everyone just focuses on their part of the value chain,” Jason added.
There’s no doubt that COVID-19 has also accelerated adoption, and MHub’s own sales in the first half of 2020 increased by 3.5x compared to the same period last year.
They’ve got several exciting plans in the pipeline, but their key focus for now is to first improve their suite of apps for a better user experience.
In the next 5 years, they want to be the standard for all property sales transactions in Southeast Asia. On their map are 5 SEA countries, starting with Indonesia and Thailand in Q2 2021.
Strategies To Elevate Their Winning Formula
Reflecting on their journey thus far, Jason had to credit MaGIC for playing a major role in it.
2 years after starting MHub, they realised that they still didn’t know much about building a scalable tech startup.
So, when they heard MaGIC was taking applications for the Global Accelerator Programme (GAP), they didn’t hesitate to apply.
“It helped us look into areas we didn’t even know we didn’t know. I’m especially glad to connect with other startups who were going through the same stuff we were going through at varying stages,” Jason said.
Now an alumnus, they’ve had the opportunity to participate in several industry related events, be speakers, and mentor new entrepreneurs.
For further growth, MHub is looking at fundraising.
“We have a winning formula and believe now is the best time to grow deep and wide to better serve our user groups,” Jason told Vulcan Post.
They were recently backed by the global VC 500 Startups, and will be running an ECF campaign on pitchIN to raise RM3 million.
This would be their second campaign on pitchIN after first successfully raising their targeted amount back in 2019.
The funds would go to improving MHub’s current apps, growing the team, and marketing efforts to raise awareness of their solutions.
Featured Image Credit: (L-R) Joshua Ong, Quek Wee Siong, Jason Ding, and Jon Saw, co-founders of MHub
