Ravi Chandran
PropTech Firm SensorFlow Raises US$8.3M Funding Led by OpenSpace Ventures, Gaw Capital Partners
After securing US$2.7M in Series A funding last year, PropTech firm SensorFlow announced another successful fundraising of US$8.3M in a Series A+ round led by the leading technology venture, Openspace Ventures and internationally recognised real-estate private fund, Gaw Capital Partners. The round was also included other prominent investors from the property and logistics industries, such as private investor Pierre Lorinet from Trafigura, and Aurum Investments.
The success of PropTech firm SensorFlow latest funding round highlights the current and growing demand from the global hospitality industry for more sustainable and efficient energy management solutions. Presently, they have signed on by about 10,000 hotel rooms across Southeast Asia and recorded a 1,000% increase in hotel room installations in 2019 alone.
Coupled with this, PropTech firm SensorFlow has well-established portfolio of global hospitality clients that are managed by world-leading hotel brands such Dorsett Hospitality International, Hyatt, The Ascott Limited and Accor, this significant growth has placed SensorFlow in a strong position to rapidly scale themselves on a global level.
With this funding, they are excited to develop their smart building management solution further to help more large-chain hotels, commercial properties and industrial spaces in optimising their building efficiency, productivity and sustainability. By upgrading their solution for hotels’ fully-optimised operational productivity and inter-team communication, their improved productivity suite of new features will empower hotel staff to better strategise housekeeping/cleaning routes effectively and enable the engineering team to move towards developing advanced predictive maintenance strategies.
At the same time, their team is working together to develop their solution further to cater to more international markets, especially those with colder climates, like Japan, Australia, Europe, and the US. Although the current state of the global travel and hospitality industry is uncertain due to the global pandemic, SensorFlow is maximising this timely capital to support the industry’s recovery by ensuring that their advanced IoT solution is made accessible to all affected hotels and properties with their modified zero upfront cost, Pay-As-You-Save floating payment model.
Similarly, this crucial funding milestone marks the progress of PropTech firm SensorFlow as they take another step closer to achieving their mission of installing 800,000 smart hotel rooms by 2022 and making smart buildings a reality worldwide.
Property technology funding in the Asia Pacific region declined last year, a sign of general caution among investors toward the tech industry after a years-long boom.
Proptech start-ups raised US$625.9 million in 2019, compared to a record US$1 billion in 2018, according to data from tech media company Tech in Asia.
The decline comes as investors take a step back after years of growth in a commercial real estate industry that has come to embrace technologies like artificial intelligence and augmented reality. But the shrinking numbers don’t necessarily give the full picture, says Jordan Kostelac, director of Proptech, Asia Pacific, JLL.
“While venture capital interest in proptech start-ups may have peaked for now, in our work with clients and fellow corporates, we have seen that interest in proptech in Asia Pacific continues to grow and is now beginning to mature,” he says.
“The success of PropTech firm SensorFlow points to the signs of the times. Property services firms and agents must upgrade to keep up with technology or they must die”, said Mr Paul Ho, chief mortgage officer of iCompareLoan.
He noted that many property agencies struggle to keep up with all the regulatory changes in the industry, as well as the changing financial calculations for acquiring a property. He urged property agents to master the basics in property financing, refinancing, taxation and CPF.
Mr Ho said that iCompareLoan.com runs a full 2 – 3 days course on how property agents can produce such reports for their customers. He added that the trademarked course teaches Property Agents how to generate complicated Financial calculations using – Home Loan Report (TM) – in 3 mins flat. This helps Property agents to close deals faster and serve customers more professionally.
The Home Loan Report tool is a Singapore’s first one-of-a-kind analysis platform that provides latest updates of detailed loan packages and helps property agents, financial advisors and mortgage brokers to analyse home loan packages for their clients and give unbiased home loan / commercial loan analysis for their property buyers and home owners.
As buyers of the future grow more discerning, agents cannot afford to just rely on their personality or their experience to attract clients. Buyers and sellers of the future will increasingly rely on agents to have knowledge on property finance calculations and this is where the Home Loan report comes in.
This trademarked tool is a one-stop solution that can help deliver a detailed home loan report to property agents in 3 minutes flat. This is especially helpful when agents who do not have knowledge on property finance calculations make cold calls to potential clients and need to have a thorough analysis at hand in order to best direct each client on what their property buying and selling options are.
Such a report will not only help agents deliver the best possible property options to their clients, it will also help prevent the agent or potential buyers or sellers from wasting each other’s time since they already have all the information they need on the potential client’s buying or selling prospects at hand.
Property agents who want to continue working in the industry must set themselves apart and position themselves as thought leaders, especially in this day and age where digital marketing largely drives the economy.
