NAB Ventures backs $7m round for Australia's BrickX
NAB Ventures, a unit of National Australia Bank (NAB), has joined a A$9 million ($7 million) Series A funding round for BrickX, a domestic financial technology start-up focused on the real estate sector.
Founded in 2014, BrickX offers an online platform that helps customers purchase and monitor real estate assets through an emerging scheme known as fractional property investment. The approach allows retail investors to split properties into shares and share returns collectively through rent or an eventual sale.
Since launching operations in 2016, the company has established a coverage portfolio of 14 properties across Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, serving some 9,000 members. It focuses on residential properties and claims to help customers realize aspirations of home ownership in the expensive Australian real estate market. Local competitors include CoVesta and DomaCom, which received a A$1 million investment last month from US asset manager Lind Partners.
“NAB Ventures has scanned the market globally, to identify a range of companies and business models that attempt to solve for this, particularly as NAB looks to support its customers along the full home ownership journey,” Todd Forest, a managing director of NAB Ventures, said in a statement. “NAB Ventures chose BrickX as the leading opportunity based on its unique business model, exceptional user experience and the opportunity to leverage the platform to innovate and help more Australians with their home ownership goals.”
NAB launched its VC program in 2015 with a A$50 million fund targeting customer-centric technology start-ups both in Australia and offshore. Earlier this month, it backed a A$5.9 million round for ActivePipe, a Melbourne-based software supplier that operates an automated communication and predictive analytics platform that serves more than 1,150 real estate offices by helping agencies and brokers facilitate property transactions.
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