The Aptuno platform, focused on the rental housing market, has managed to finalize its seed capital round for 5.1 million dollars and points to new horizons within the Latin America (LA) region, but not without first consolidating in Mexico later of its expansion from Colombia.
In an interview with EconoHábitat, two co-founders of the platform, Cristina Palacios and Alejandro Gómez de Greiff, commented on the plans of this firm after finalizing this round of capital, such as, for example, adding financial components to the product they offer, where they seek to provide solutions for both landlords and tenants through technology.
“It is a round basically focused on growing, scaling and, above all, developing our product further on the technological side, so we are hiring programmers, in order to grow and improve the product,” explained Palacios.
Currently, Aptuno operates in two cities in Colombia, Medellín and Bogotá, and in the country in Mexico City, so the capital raised will serve to expand next year at least in one more city, which is yet to be defined.
Palacios explained that this round was led by Kayyak Ventures and Dalus Capital, in addition to other investors, who see an area of opportunity for the development of the proptech industry, which is one that applies technology in the real estate segment, especially due to its potential in the Latin American region.
“Something important is this regional focus, the idea is that this product does not remain only in Colombia and Mexico, but rather that it be a regional product with a focus on Latin America,” said Palacios.
Financial component
According to Gómez de Greiff, the Aptuno model is increasingly accepted in the markets where it operates, due to the ease that they provide both to the tenant and the tenant in the matter of renting a property; however, the firm intends to add new financial components to its operations.
The co-founder of the platform stated that one of these components is to advance resources to the tenant from day zero of the signing of the contract, as well as granting liquidity if their property is not occupied for a certain time.
“This is a model that works better and better to the extent that there is more density in the markets where we operate and to the extent that we have much more offer, we are going to provide a much more powerful value proposition to our users,” said Gómez de Greiff.
For the representative of Aptuno, the rental housing market has great potential in Mexico, as well as in Latin America, due to its growth, which is why technology becomes essential to expand and reach new regions.
“This market is huge. Between Colombia and Mexico, I think there could be about 4 or 5 million units for rent and if we add more from Latin America, there must be about 15 million homes for rent, then the market is huge and we have a lot of work ahead of us ” , highlighted Gómez de Greiff.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx