Facebook co-founder leads round for Singapore property site

The company was set up in late 2013 and secured approximately $600,000 from the likes of Fenox Venture Capital, Golden Gate Ventures, East Ventures and 500 Startups. Following its beta launch in October of last year, 99.co receives 150,000 unique visitors per month and has around 30,000 rental and sales listings for residential properties.

The business was essentially a response to the founders' growing frustrations when searching for apartments to rent in Singapore, although they soon found that residential sales presented the same problem. According to CEO Darius Cheung, most property sites see themselves as media companies and generate revenue through real estate agents paying for prime positions in searches.

"We thought that was a disservice to users because they don't get the relevant results they want and it also forces agents to compete in a bad way - instead of trying to increase the quality and authenticity of the information they are just paying more and more," he said. "We saw the opportunity to do things differently."

Saverin got to know the founders through mutual friends in Singapore. He had encountered the same problems in the property market. The Facebook alumnus was going to be the sole lead investor but then Sequoia came in and they covered the entire round between them.

"When I was trying to find a home for myself here in Singapore a few years ago, 99.co didn't exist and I naturally explored all web and mobile tools available, and I was nothing short of disappointed," Saverin said at 99.co's official launch party this week, TechinAsia reported. "Were the listings real and available? Were the pricing data and other details accurate? Why so many duplicates? It was a high-friction and time-consuming experience that had to change."

99.co's immediate priority is to achieve scale within Singapore. Then it will consider monetization, most likely through charging fees to agents and home owners that list properties on the site. The company currently has a staff of 15 and is looking to hire about five more. Once 99.co has traction locally and a strategy to expand within Southeast Asia, it will look to raise a Series A round.

This is Cheung's third start-up. His first, mobile security solutions provider tenCube was bootstrapped into existence in 2005 and then spent a frustrating 18 months trying and failing to raise capital. It eventually received some informal seed funding and then a formal seed round in 2010. Later that year it was sold to McAfee.

Cheung claims that Singapore has gone from having not enough seed capital to having too much. Meanwhile, the Series A space, where 12 months ago there was concern at a lack of investors willing to take start-ups from revenue generative to profitable, has also seen progress.

"There has been a substantial increase in capital inflow in terms of the VC funds getting funded. My rough estimate is that there is $150-200 million ready for Series A investments in Singapore," Cheung said. "Any company worth investing in can find money."

Sequoia is a case in point. Although 99.co represents the VC firm's first seed investment in Singapore, it is increasingly interested in Southeast Asia. Sequoia's fourth India-focused fund, which closed last year at $530 million, has an expanded remit to take in opportunities in Southeast Asia as well.

99.co's rivals include PropertyGuru, although the business models are not identical. The company was established in 2007 and claims to receive more than 3.5 visitors per month and has 230,000 listings. Having received three rounds of funding between 2008 and 2012, the company has expanded from Singapore into Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. An IPO is said to be in the works.

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• Topics
• Real estate
• Technology
• Southeast Asia
• Early-stage
• Venture
• seed
• Venture
• Southeast Asia
• Singapore
• Real estate
• TMT
• Sequoia Capital