South African prop-tech startup Flow, raises $4.5 million for its B2B growth strategy

South African prop-tech startup Flow, which is focused on helping real estate developers, and agencies grow their business via social media marketing, has announced the raise of $4.5 million in a pre-Series A round today. This brings its total funding to almost $6 million.

The latest funding round was led by Futuregrowth Asset Management with $2 million. It also received backing from Endeavor Harvest Fund and serial entrepreneur Steven Heilbron. Other investors participating in this financing round included Kalon Venture Partners, Vunani Fintech Fund, and Buffet Investments.

Speaking on the new investment, Amrish Narrandes, Futuregrowth Asset Management head of Private Equity and Venture Capital, said,

We share Daniel and Gil’s vision to bring the property industry into the 21st century and know they have the expertise and experience to make it happen — and we’re pleased to be able to be part of a South African company taking bold steps that will bring much-needed change to an essential global industry.

“We’ve keenly followed Flow’s progress in South Africa and Australia and integration into the B2B side of the global property industry as the next natural step in the company’s evolution”, the statement concluded.

This new funding will help the company’s B2B expansion strategy and plans to incorporate Flow’s social media-driven real estate marketing platform into current international property websites and CRM platforms.

Additionally, the prop-tech plans to use the funds to add social media sites like TikTok and LinkedIn and other advertising channels like digital out-of-home billboards as it currently operates with Facebook and Instagram.

Read Also: “A lack of public sector competence” limits proptech’s growth but Gmaven is providing solutions

About Flow

With the knowledge gained from their previously owned adtech marketing company, Popimedia, which was the largest buyer of Facebook media inventory in Africa for some of the world’s biggest brands, Gil Sperling and Daniel Levy, founded Flow in 2018.

Flow began as a platform to reward renters for paying on time. However, it has since evolved into a prop-tech startup that assists in the automation and marketing for real estate agents, and developers to pull listings and automatically create ads on Facebook, Instagram, and other digital channels.

The startup earns money when these agents utilize its SaaS platform, and by taking a share of the money spent on marketing. According to Daniel Levy, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, the startup revenue has grown 20% month over month, a huge increase within the last year.

Speak on their growth strategy plans, Daniel Levy said,

Our route to market, for the most bit, has been going door-to-door from the franchisor to the franchisee to different offices within that group. And over the last couple of months, we’ve identified the enterprise channel, as we call it, which is more associated with strapping on our technology to portals.

So our next phase of traction and growth will come from those relationships, which are significant in our world. And that’s why we’ve just gone through this capital raise to experiment with that essentially.

Daniel Levy

According to TechCrunch, Flow currently has over 300+ clients via its platform. It is also used by nearly 6,000 agents across South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mauritius, and Australia. The prop-tech startup is looking to expand to Europe (France, Germany, Belgium, and the UK).

Read Also: How Dolapo Omidire’s Estate Intel is influencing conversations about prop-tech in Nigeria

The rise of the African prop-tech industry

Real estate is not a new thing, but the concept of adopting technology to help simplify and meet up the demands of your market participants through prop-tech is still relatively nascent in Africa.

Real estate sectors seek to provide more memorable experiences with these technologically integrated services as customers become more sophisticated and have needs beyond the norm for “broke and mortar” services. 

As with the potential to grow, this might be a good investment opportunity, especially as the prop-tech industry in Africa still has limited competition, and with the rising number of populations in the region, it is not an industry that will have a downfall anytime soon.

This might be a strong investment opportunity because of the potential for growth and the fact that there is little competition in the prop-tech sector in Africa, which is unlikely to change soon, given the region’s growing population.

.