Italian proptech startup RockAgent spa announced a 3 million euro round (see the press release here). The round was financed by an international pool of business angels coordinated, as advisor, by Sarona Partners 365x, an Israeli accelerator partner of important companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce.
RockAgent is an Italian proptech startup, founded in September 2018 by Daniel Debash, who, despite his name, is Italian too. It is the first hybrid real estate agency in Italy, as it transfers most of the services related to the sale of real estate online, despite having a physical network of real estate agents. With RockAgent the owners of the buildings access an evolved personal platform to monitor the progress of the negotiations in real time, the appointments set by the agent, the visibility obtained from online announcements, statistics and much more. Thanks to virtual reality and big data, the costs and times of the sale are reduced and the whole process is optimized, so the real estate agent in the area concentrates solely on the main and value-added phases of the sale. The startup is active in Rome and Milan, has already signed over 350 exclusive assignments and has 50 employees, of which 36 are agents.
The capital raised will be used to speed up the company’s growth operations in Italy: after the launch in Rome, by 2019 the company has planned to start operations in Milan and from 2020 in other cities, including Turin, Genoa, Bologna and Florence. The funds will also support the expansion of the team, technological development to support real estate sales (VR, big data, centralization of management processes) and marketing, especially on digital channels.
“Since we launched RockAgent, the company has grown at a very fast pace, exceeding even our expectations,” said Daniel Debash, adding that “these results and investor confidence show how the hybrid agency model, after its success abroad, can work well in Italy and therefore it becomes essential for us to push the accelerator on the growth process. The funds obtained will help us become a reference point in the main Italian cities for those engaged in the process of selling and buying a home and want transparency, professionalism and innovative services at a low cost.Our goal by 2020 is to establish ourselves among the real estate groups more important in Italy “.
