Rio de Janeiro-based proptech EmCasa, a startup company that buys and sells real estate, announced on Wednesday a US$21 million round from Globo Ventures – a fund that has already invested in Grupo Zap Viva Real – Igah Ventures, and funds that have already invested in the company, such as monashees, MAYA Capital, Pear Ventures, NBV, and ONEVC.
The amount will be invested in technology and expansion throughout Brazil, besides the development of financial products. Today, the startup operates only in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Before this funding, the company had already raised BRL 48 million.
Son of a broker, the CEO of EmCasa, Gustavo Vaz, already knew the real estate market in Latin America’s largest market. He knew that, in Brazil, the real estate broker had to learn how to take pictures, analyze legal issues, and that he was responsible for the “most important transaction in people’s lives”, which, according to him, is the purchase of a property.
“It became very clear that one of the main pains of the market was advice. The client did not have the information he needed to make the best decision to buy a property and the best decision to take credit,” Vaz said in an interview with LABS.
In 2018, Vaz teamed up with Lucas Cardozo and Gabriel Laet to create an algorithm-based platform with recommendations for buying and selling properties, and built a team of 80 contract brokers. He says that in the first year of operations, the startup did not sell any property, it only worked the management system that uses artificial intelligence and developed a methodology for a good customer experience.
Through EmCasa’s platform, it is possible to make a 3D virtual tour of the property and the payment process is integrated with Brazil‘s largest banks. It is up to EmCasa to find the most economic financing for the customer, if he wants to.
According to Vaz, EmCasa’s realtors sell an average of 10 times more properties per year than traditional realtors, three times faster than the market’s average of 45 days. “You combine all of this proprietary technology with a team that will follow these processes to the letter and you can deliver a much better and more efficient experience for the customer,” he says.
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In 2020, EmCasa doubled revenues and the expectation for this year is to reach BRL 50 million. Vaz says that the startup was not actively seeking capital, because it had already raised a round last year, and another the year before, and part of the money was still in the company’s cash.
“It is not that we needed this investment, however, when we look at the results of the last 18 months, we see that we have created a model that works very well, the technology model with experts in-house. I think it is an important role of a startup to be always on the radar of potential new investors and we received some proposals.”
Today, 40% of EmCasa’s clients come to the company organically, that is, through recommendations. This generates a lot of confidence in the work of the startup, which, according to Vaz, has made BRL 700 million in transactions per year, something translated into around 2,500 customers per year.
The EmCasa platform already works with partnerships with banks to provide real estate credit to its customers, but the firm also thinks of expanding the range to offer consortia and secured loans.
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“We look at the market a lot, many people are creating new things, and when we make these comparisons we see that EmCasa has built a unique product. Today we understand exactly what the ideal purchase of a property is like. We mapped all this and built this proprietary technology with the internal team.”
