Bengaluru-based proptech platform Settlin on Monday said it has secured pre-Series A funding of $1 million (around Rs 7.7 crore) led by Powerhouse Ventures, with participation from Rajesh Sawhney-founded GSF Fund, Murugavel Janakiraman (founder and chief executive, Bharat Matrimony) and Dinesh Agrawal (founder, CEO, IndiaMART), among others.
The startup plans to use the fresh capital to expand Bengaluru footprint and boost its consumer tech vertical. According to a statement, it also aims to execute 24,000 visits across Bengaluru in the next one year leading to over 800 property sales worth Rs 600 crore.
Settlin, operated by Linking Spaces Technologies Pvt. Ltd, was founded by Ashish Srivastava and Sudhanshu B in 2016. The startup maintains property profiles, physically inspects properties and manages the entire transaction, including legal verification, home loan and sale deeds. It claims to have grown 4 times in the last two quarters and is currently helping over 5,000 prospective buyers conduct 1,200 property inspections every month.
“The residential re-sale market is 3 times that of new sale and holds the key to truly organize the entire real estate transactions industry, forever. This ever-growing sector remains unorganized and complex to crack because of its multiple moving parts. As a result, proptech companies and organized brokers mainly focus on the low hanging fruit i.e., being a property classified or doing developer sales (channel sales). Settlin is now bridging the gap between homebuyers and individual re-sellers through its hyper-local approach which is both standard and personal at the same time,” said Ashish Srivastava, co-founder and chief executive officer, Settlin.
The Bengaluru-based proptech platform is eyeing an expansion to 11 more metro cities, starting with Mumbai in the next 5 years covering 20% market share in Bengaluru and 5% pan India, it said in a statement. In February 2021, Settlin raised Rs 3 crore (around $413,941) in an angel funding round from GSF Accelerator and ah! Ventures angel platform.
Powerhouse Ventures (PV), one of the leaders in Settlin’s funding round, is an early-stage venture capital firm with an investment focus on startups in India, the US and Southeast Asia. Currently, the company manages an active portfolio of over 30 companies which includes Whatfix, Slintel, Gamezop, NewsBytes and DailyRounds, among others.
“Home buying experience in India is extremely fragmented. The experience with the re-sale of homes is even more broken. Settlin's digitization of the entire resale process, from curation to transaction, is rapidly changing the home buying and selling experience bringing end-to-end transparency and efficiency,” said Kshitij Golwalkar, general partner, Powerhouse Ventures.
