Proptech Startup Facilio Raises $35 Mn From Dragoneer, Brookfield Growth

Chennai-based Facilio, a property operations software startup, has raised $35 Mn in its Series B funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group. The round also saw participation from Brookfield Growth (who is also a Facilio customer) and existing investors Accel India and Tiger Global.

“This investment will allow us to extend our market leadership, expand sales and marketing, and enable more companies to reach success through a predictive, connected model of real estate operations,” founder and CEO Prabhu Ramachandran said in a statement.

Former Zoho employees Prabhu Ramachandran, Krishnamoorthi Rangasamy, Rajavel Subramanian and Yogendra Babu founded Facilio in 2017 for commercial real estate owners. The startup leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-learning technologies to help in managing buildings operations, maintenance, and sustainability.

Facilio uses its all-in-one app suite to unify facilities and sustainability management across a portfolio of large buildings. Currently, Facilio is solving operational problems for 10K+ properties worth over 100 Mn sq ft across 12 countries. The startup’s growing scale deployments includes 40+ larger enterprise customers across the commercial office, healthcare, retail, banking, and government real estate categories.

Facilio guides real estate portfolios through their digital transformation journey with its advanced IoT-native and mobile-first product offerings. Facilio in a statement mentioned that it wants to be the cloud platform unifying field workforce processes and infrastructure IoT data, in one place, similar to how Salesforce unified customer management and ServiceNow unified IT services management.

In 2017, Facilio raised $1.5 Mn (INR 10.59 Cr) in funding from Accel Partners. Later, the startup raised $6.4 Mn (INR 45.12 Cr) in its Series A round led by Tiger Global and existing investor Accel Partners.

The Booming Proptech Space In India

Proptech refers to the application of digital technologies in the real estate industry. The pandemic has further added to the demand and adoption of proptech services. Testament to the hype in the segment, Bengaluru-based real estate platform NoBroker became India’s first proptech unicorn in November 2021 by raising $210 Mn in its Series E round

Recently, Aurum PropTech announced that it will acquire a majority stake in B2B SaaS startup TheHouseMonk with an investment of $5 Mn. The startup operates in rental real estate. Another proptech startup Square Yards is planning to go public and raise INR 1,500 Cr. The startup is expected to file its DRHP with the markets regulator by February 2022.

The proptech sector in India is fuelled by rapid urbanisation and rural migration to cities. India has one of the largest numbers of proptech startups in Asia-Pacific. In recent times global 3D software modelling giant Autodesk has also acquired Indian construction software startups like Pype and Manufacton.

Globally, the proptech industry has been moving to integrated plays. Leading players such as Zillow, Beike and Compass are creating an integrated digital consumer experience in all parts of the transaction, on both the buy-and sell-side which enable them to capture more of the transaction.

Currently, the real estate sector contributes around 6-7% to the total GDP. It is expected to reach a market size of $1 Tn by 2030, contributing 13% to the country’s GDP by 2025.