Protech Startup Huspy Secures $37M from Sequoia Capital India and Founders Fund

Earlier this year, Huspy launched its second offering to complement its mortgage product: a property marketplace. On the platform, users see a list of properties they can book to visit and pay as Huspy closes the transaction on their behalf. To summarise both business segments, Huspy starts at the top of the funnel, streamlines the process, and completes transactions on users’ behalf.

“When you are a venture capitalist, you have the opportunity to see a lot of what’s happening. Proptech was always dear to my heart”, said the chief executive.

He added, “If you look at the space, a typical customer journey involves visiting the portal, which has 25 to 30% of fake listings. But every listing that we have on a platform is verified".

For its mortgage product, Huspy partners with banks and agencies. For its marketplace, the proptech platform integrates with the CRM of agencies via an API which allows it to list credible properties on sale. Since Huspy has a distribution network in the real estate market owing to its mortgage play to thousands of customers, it can convert faster than classifieds. 

“Our conversion rate is north of 90%, so every time the phone of an agency rings, they always pick up customers on our platform versus a portal because our conversion is much higher,” the CEO explained.

Huspy claims to process $2 billion in annualized gross merchandise volume (GMV), growing 25% month-on-month in revenue. It makes money from charging banks 1% per mortgage transaction and 2-3% to real estate agencies for closing a transaction. 

Antoun says Huspy is the market leader in the UAE and possesses better unit economics than other proptech platforms in the region. He said the new funding would rev Huspy’s expansion as it doubles down on growth across the UAE and Spain, two markets with a total addressable market of $13 billion. The company–whose team consists of talent previously from Loft, QuintoAndar, and Uber spread across Dubai and Madrid–plans to move into other parts of Europe even as it invests in technology development to cater to future demand. 

GV Ravishankar, the managing director at Sequoia Capital, the lead investor in the oversubscribed round, said his firm is impressed with Antoun and Huspy’s mission to transform the home buying and financing experience in the MENA region. 

“In a short span of time, the company has demonstrated its strong value proposition for the real estate ecosystem and has become the market leader in mortgage broking in the UAE with healthy unit economics,” he said. “And Huspy’s ethos to build for the long term with a deep focus on having the best team in the region resonates deeply with us".