Proptech Startup Landeed Bags INR 19.5 Cr For Its Property Title Search Engine

Bengaluru-based proptech startup Landeed has bagged INR 19.5 Cr ($2.5 Mn) in Pre-Seed funding round led by Clutterbot CEO Justin Hamilton, CRED’s Kunal Shah, Chris Maurice of Yellow Card and Christian Kaczmarczyk of Third Prime VC. Angel investors Manmohan Chandolu, and nine other Y Combinator alum, among others, also took part in the funding round.

The startup plans to use the fresh funds to expedite product development and build a comprehensive and standardised property documentation retrieval system.

In India, where land ownership has largely been under the ‘presumptive ownership’ model, and a property buyer conducts due diligence without a single title document, Landeed’s property title search engine is aimed at streamlining the process. 

Further, Landeed’s mobile application helps owners, agents, developers, and legal advisors to check real estate records for building, lending, and transacting properties.

For the uninitiated, title is referred to as the rights related to a real estate property, and a title search becomes essential to determine and confirm the legal ownership of a property when they undergo any new transaction. On the other hand, title insurance protects lenders and homebuyers from any financial loss due to defects in a property title.

The startup sees scope of working more in the space beyond just the title insurance vertical, which recently got introduced in India and has a nearly $25 Bn market in the US.

“We believe there [is] a lot larger segments to tap in India beyond title insurance and in the coming months, we are planning to enable property title embedment on the blockchain,” said Landeed founders ZJ Lin, Sanjay Mandava, and Jonathan Richards in a joint statement.

Founded in 2022 by Lin, Mandava, and Richards, the startup is trying to simplify property due diligence for all parties to engage, communicate, and close deals in a country like India, where 67% of all court cases deal with land-related disputes. The startup claims over 100K property owners and agents have already used Landeed to buy, sell, and build real estate.

Besides its mobile application, the startup is also launching a desktop property diligence and transaction platform to assist enterprises with multiple stakeholders. The startup also plans to issue title insurance down the line.

“They’re (Landeed team) going to become a critical piece to ensuring smooth real estate transactions in India and over time more emerging markets,” said Kaczmarczyk, principal at Third Prime VC. 

“On top of that, their ability to leverage web3 technology will only make the solution more permanent and transparent,” he added.

In the larger proptech segment dominated by the big startup players such as NoBroker, PropTiger, who largely work as tech platforms enabling online property rentals, buying, documentation, and others, Landeed is part of a comparatively newer sub-segment.

Terra Economics & Analytics Lab or TEAL is another similar startup which is working on transforming land and property records in India using AI and ML. Recently, TEAL also raised $2 Mn (INR 14.8 Cr) in its Pre-Series A round, which was led by Omidyar Network India with participation from Info Edge.

These Indian proptech players have started disrupting a market segment, the real estate market, which is expected to reach $1 Tn in size by 2030, up from $200 Bn in 2021. The real estate sector in India is also expected to contribute 13% to the country’s GDP by 2025.