UK-based Lofti which describes itself as ‘the Uber of property management’, raised $1.5m in seed funding from Taiwanese family office fund WoodJC.
It will use the capital investment to expand services in the UK and flash out an Android app in addition to its existing iOS and web platform. The company will also focus on building out its customer base and vetted contractor network in London and other key UK cities.
Founded by Andreas Gkerazis in 2020, Lofti is a cloud-based property management platform for tenants, homeowners and landlords with the aim to simplify managing a real estate portfolio, from accounting and budgeting to maintenance management. It allows collaboration between service providers, contractors, property owners, homebuilders, and tenants to improve and maintain their properties.
The company provides document management and communication platform to improve transparency and interactions between landlords and tenants, an on-demand fixed price booking system for vetted contractors, data analytics to predict potential maintenance issues and a community hub to enable different groups such as landlords to share advice, provide support or exchange services.
Homeowners and tenants have an Uber-like list of contractors who can choose the job. Much like Uber, users can track the arrival time of their hire, agree and pay fees and sign off on the work done.
In addition to the transparency afforded by the collaboration features on the platform, Lofti also uses data analytics to predict potential maintenance issues, cutting them off at the pass before they happen.
As a part of the funding round, Lofti has also boosted its team by hiring Revolut’s lead product Yang Li as product and design Lead as well as Plum co-founder and CTO Alex Michael as interim CTO. FXPro tech lead Angelos Pillos and senior engineer Demetris Hoplaros joined Lofti as solutions architect lead and software engineering lead respectively. In addition, Vasileios Zavitsanos has also joined as COO from previously leading the property development and management arm of Vible.
Commenting on the round, Gkerazis said, “Since coming to the UK I have been a tenant, homeowner, landlord, and property developer. This has given me insights into problems within the industry that cause a lot of stress and waste a lot of time and money for all parties. My view is that we need to focus on fundamental needs by creating a community approach where everyone is able to work together to raise standards. This means improving the relationship and communications between homeowners and contractors, and tenants and landlords. By working together we can cut costs, improve satisfaction and give everyone a better deal.”
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