COMPANY SET TO TRANSFORM DEVELOPMENT APPRAISALS RAISES $700K
For immediate issue: Tuesday 26th February 2019
Aprao, a revolutionary new company that is set to transform the way that the property industry runs real estate pro formas for development opportunities, has secured investment of $700,000 (£500K) from heavy-weight property, technology and business experts. Led by Surplus Invest, a German-based early stage VC firm, the seed round also included personal investment from angels, Robert Grigg (Executive Chairman of Property Finance at Hampshire Trust Bank) and Conan Lauterpacht (Former VP of Corporate Development at Altus Group), as well as a follow-on commitment from Pi Labs, the PropTech VC firm.
Proptech startups are popping up
One of a growing number of notable UK-based proptech startups, Aprao was founded in 2017 by industry expert Daniel Norman, and is the first cloud-based tool for running property development feasibilities and reports from anywhere, on any device. With Daniel having worked for over 10 years in property development, development finance brokerage, as well as a lender, Aprao is his brainchild, and based on his own extensive experience of running pro formas, evaluating deals and structuring finance for developers.
In his years of experience, Daniel was involved in the launch of The Strata Fund, created to provide mezzanine finance to experienced residential developers, particularly during the height of the 2008 recession when other banks weren’t lending. Norman was also responsible for property finance lending at Hampshire Trust Bank, a specialist challenger bank focused on supporting small and medium-sized housebuilders to fund thousands of new homes.
New proptech companies are changing the real estate landscape
Joining forces with technical co-founder and expert software engineer Jonathan Raoult, Aprao is designed to streamline the feasibility process and interactions with property developers, lenders and professionals.
Daniel Norman, Founder and CEO of Aprao said: “We’re delighted to have been selected as Surplus Invest’s first UK investment and close our first round of seed funding. Our mission with Aprao is to leverage tech to create a much smarter development feasibility process. I know from my own years of experience that real estate development isn’t as easy as it looks and saving time on hugely consuming tasks such as this, is invaluable." Daniel continues: “We estimate that a detailed development feasibility report currently takes one to two hours to put together but with Aprao this can be reduced to 5 to 10 minutes, with the software able to assist the user in making fast, data-driven decisions. Typically, only one site out of 60 goes ahead after it has been run through a pro forma, so this is a huge amount of time saved by both the developer and professional team, but also the lender who must carefully review each one. We hope that the software will take the property world by storm.”
Many property businesses want a tech evolution for commercial real estate firms
Jannis Roser, Managing Partner at Surplus Invest said: “The business opportunity in combination with the excellent founder team gives us a strong reason to believe that [Aprao] is going to transform the way of how property industry feasibilities are done sustainably. We are very proud to welcome Daniel and Jonathan as the first UK investment to our portfolio.”
Faisal Butt, the Founder & Chairman of PropTech VC Pi Labs said: “[Aprao] is set to bring the world of property development feasibilities into the modern era at long last. Running the numbers on a property development project is far more painstaking and onerous than it needs to be and has remained largely unchanged over time. Having worked in all facets of property development and finance for a decade himself, Daniel has identified a clear opportunity to improve the industry’s antiquated way of doing things. Real estate pro formas are finally entering the digital age, and we are excited to be a part of it.”
Aprao’s beta software is currently being trialled with selected companies ahead of the company’s official launch this summer. The new funding will enable Aprao to continue developing the software and expand their team. For further information or to join the waiting list, please visit aprao.com.
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