Exclusive: JLL backed proptech startup Zipgrid raises extended seed round

MyAashiana Management Services, a Mumbai-based startup that owns real estate asset management solutions platform Zipgrid, has raised $1 million in an extended seed funding round from early stage investment firm 1Crowd and a set of undisclosed investors, a top company official told TechCircle.

The startup will use the capital raised in this round to enhance its technology platform, strengthen its sales team and roll out new projects, co-founder Kunal Gupta said.

With the latest capital infusion, Zipgrid has garnered over $2 million so far across multiple rounds.

1Crowd first invested in the startup in August 2016. Later in May 2017, it raised $500,000 from property consultancy firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) and 1Crowd. JLL made the investment through a subsidiary called JLL Technology Ventures. 

Returning investor 1Crowd, owned by Mumbai-based Zeva Capsol, currently runs a sector agnostic early stage investment platform. The fund co-invests alongside the investor community registered with the platform. JLL Technology Ventures is also an investor in Hyderabad-based interior design and home décor startup Foyr.com and Noida-based employee transportation services startup Cloud 1. The global property consultant also runs a dedicated proptech-focused fund dubbed JLL Spark.

Founded in 2015 by Gupta and Jaydip Popat, Zipgrid caters to all the stakeholders of a property -- occupants, operators and owners - providing technology and knowledge services to housing and commercial communities. Its technology stack is split into three core offerings across these three segments.

It attempts to improve occupant’s experience by offering services such as bill collection, visitor management, parking facilities, and booking. For operators, Zipgrid offers solutions for preventive and planned maintenance, a centralized help desk tool, compliance, and financial management that help them improve efficiency. For owners, it offers a bird’s eye view of the property with analytics and other performance metrics besides accounting, financial management, compliance, and control management solutions.

“The market was only focused on the occupants’ experience. We wanted to create an ecosystem and integrate the various aspects to improve the occupants experience, operator’s efficiency, and owner’s control over the whole property,” Gupta said. 

Zipgrid offers its solutions to independent property owners (each individual property averages around 100 households) and large enterprises. The enterprise business was launched just three months ago. 

Currently, about 15% of its business comes from the enterprise channel and independent properties account for the rest. 

Gupta said the company is working towards getting the ratio to 50:50 by December 2020.

In October last year, the startup signed an India-wide mandate with JLL whereby Zipgrid’s technology would be used exclusively to manage all of its properties in India.

“Zipgrid’s whole platform has been built from the perspective of unifying the ecosystem, rather a point to point solution, which provides for a far superior human experience. Its approach to this market, especially with their tech-led knowledge services layer expands JLL's capability to truly offer one-stop shop solution, unlike a lot of other solutions we have seen in this space,” Anuj Nangpal, Asia Pacific lead, at JLL Spark said.

Tata Realty is another enterprise client. The startup claims to manage over 1 lakh households across more than 500 communities.

Zipgrid primarily competes with mobile-based security management solution myGate, which raised $56 million from Tencent Holdings and Tiger Global Management in October last year. myGate, run by Vivish Technologies, uses artificial intelligence to automate manual security tasks of gated societies such as visitor identification, home deliveries, vehicle management and child safety. It has also trained 170,000 guards on its platform.

Meanwhile, home rental startup NestAway Technologies and property listing portal NoBroker have made acquisitions in the segment this month, primarily to introduce certain value-adds to their core offerings. Goldman Sachs-backed NestAway has acquired apartment management solutions platform ApnaComplex. It plans to provide gated apartments on ApnaComplex home services through its network of vendors. In the long term, the company aims to have ApnaComplex users choose NestAway's services for home rentals.

Tiger Global and General Atlantic-backed NoBroker bought apartment management solutions firm Society Connect to strengthen its hold on the visitor and community management space. It plans to combine efficiencies of Society Connect’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with NoBroker’s own visitor and community management app NoBrokerHood. NoBrokerHood is a smart visitor and residential community management system.

The article has been amended from the original to reflect additional information provided by the company.