Little by little push proptech (technology in the segment real estate) begins to reach more slopes than the real estate and the market commercial has been reached. The Spot2 company, with about a year of operation, announced the closing of its seed capital round for 4.2 million dollars.
In an interview, Pablo Gadsden and Jorge Sequeira, co-founders of Spot2, explained that the platform’s model is based on supporting brands that are looking for a commercial real estatein finding a space, all through technology, which speeds up the closing process up to six times more than traditional operations.
“The available spaces are uploaded to the platform and we, through technology and data, connect the owners of the spaces with the brands and thus generate a better user experience for both parties. We are being six times faster than in the traditional operations today to close mallsGadsden added.
For his part, Sequeira commented that Spot2 was born from his own experience where the firm’s co-founders were looking for a commercial spacebut due to the slowness of the traditional processes, it generated a bad experience, which motivated them to create the company.
“The sector of real estate (real estate) has not changed in more than 100 years. There are companies that are dinosaurs and that continue to dedicate themselves in the same way to what they have done for many years in this sector,” Sequeira explained.
The Spot2 co-founders detailed that currently the technology in the real estate It has focused on the residential market, where there are platforms that are beginning to consolidate as important players; however, in segments like the commercialLittle has been explored in this regard.
“We see a huge area of opportunity across the commercial part, really the user experience is totally terrible. Based on that, we decided to attack this opportunity and create Spot,” Sequeira said.
Currently, according to Spot2, the obstacles found in the real estate segment commercial focus on the ambiguity of information, which generates various problems such as long times to close contracts, bureaucracy and low efficiency.
Market dynamism
For the firm’s co-founders, the issue of inflation is undoubtedly a challenge for the construction of new real estate spaces in different markets; however, in the commercial segment, the current issue is to place the available offer that exists.
“We are awaiting these inflation data and without a doubt we are experiencing an inflationary crisis, but there are many brands that are looking to get into mallsbecause they know that Mexico is going to recover at some point very soon and consumption is going to return,” said Pablo Gadsden.
For Jorge Sequeira, although the issue of the health emergency affected the real estate segment little by little, it is recovering from this impact, so there is currently an offer available so that brands can position themselves in regions or places that before the pandemic it was impossible for them to access due to costs.
“There is a lot of real supply already built that needs to be placed and really in this matter there are always construction cycles, because when the price rises construction stops, when it falls it is reactivated, but right now the focus is to place all the available supply and that is already built,” said Sequeira.
Currently, Spot2 is concentrating on the placement of “AAA” spaces, especially in Mexico City and its metropolitan area, but with a view to attacking regions such as Monterrey and Guadalajara.
According to the firm CBRE, the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico occupies about 30% of the inventory of malls in the country, which makes it the region with the most spaces in this regard.
“Mexico City will always be a very important nucleus, it is where we are focused together with the metropolitan area and we are beginning to get into Monterrey and Guadalajara,” Gadsden pointed out.
The Spot2 co-founders noted that while e-commerce has gained ground during the pandemic against traditional operations, there is currently a recovery in the influx of malls because companies have to focus on an omnichannel model to respond to current market needs.
draw attention
Spot2’s business model made international funds participate in its seed capital round, for which it raised 4.2 million dollars. Firms such as Streamline Ventures, which led the round, HOF Capital, Acrew Capital and H20 participated in it.
In addition, a group of angel investors such as Sebastián Kreiss from Xepelin, Alister Moreno from Clickalia, Alexis Patjane from 99minutes, Enzo Cavalie from Startupeable, among others, participated.
“We are a technology company that is entering the real estate commercial, it is not the other way around, which makes us more agile and capable of controlling much more market volume. There is always an ideal location for each brand,” said Pablo Gadsen.
According to the co-founders of the brand, this round will serve to strengthen its operation in Mexico, to later consider transferring its operation to other Latin American markets.