Aptuno Raises $5M Seed Round to Simplify Home Rentals Across Latin America, Attracts Global Investors

BOGOTA, Colombia, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- aptuno, a proptech company transforming the property rental market in Latin America, today announced it has raised $5.1 million in seed funding led by Dalus Capital and Kayyak Ventures after previously raising $2 million from FJ Labs, former CEO of REA Group Simon Baker, and additional backers in a pre-seed round.

Aptuno is the next-generation proptech company focused on revolutionizing the burdensome property rental process across Latin America. With 80 percent faster closings for landlords and brokerages, three times the qualified listings to search weekly than the nearest competitor, and two-hour digital credit verification, aptuno provides a fast, seamless, and digital process for tenants and landlords from search to signing.

Aptuno already operates the largest platform for rental listings in Colombia, currently serving Bogotá and Medellín, and recently expanded to Mexico City. With this funding, aptuno will hire top tech talent across the region to continue building its product and scaling operations throughout the region.

"Aptuno is building an end-to-end solution to make the rental process more efficient for tenants, landlords and brokerages alike," said Cristina Palacios, co-founder and COO of aptuno. "The addressable market for aptuno is only growing, and we intend to grow with it. We're thrilled to have our investors' support as we build the technology needed to make renting properties in Latin America more accessible."

"With this capital, aptuno will scale our fintech product line and machine learning capabilities to further tap the true market potential of rental properties in key markets across Latin America," said Alejandro Gómez de Greiff, co-founder and co-CEO of aptuno. "There are over 25 million households for rent in Spanish-speaking Latin America, mostly in the hands of individual landlords, yet renting remains a very cumbersome process for renters, owners and brokers. By simplifying the process with fast credit approvals for rent guarantee insurance, rent discount loans, a 100 percent digital transaction and tech-enabled property management services, our technology provides liquidity to the massive but historically inefficient single-family rentals market."

In addition to Dalus Capital and Kayyak Ventures, investors in the seed round include Amador Holdings, Salkantay Ventures, Shaun di Gregorio, CEO and founder of Frontier Digital Ventures, Tomás Uribe, Rodrigo Sanchez-Rios, and Jerónimo Uribe, the founders and CEO of La Haus; Michael Lahyani, CEO of PropertyFinder, the largest property portal in the Middle East; as well as U.S.-based backers FJ Labs, SOMA Capital, and Jonathan Wasserstrum, CEO of leading commercial leasing platform SquareFoot.

"Dalus is thrilled to welcome aptuno to Mexico City and support their expansion across the region," said Diego Serebrisky, Founding Managing Partner at Dalus Capital. "Aptuno is bringing groundbreaking tech and artificial intelligence to solve the headaches of property rentals across Latin America. We're confident aptuno will improve the rental experience for landlords, tenants and brokers."

"We strongly believe aptuno will become the one-stop shop for renters, landlords and brokers in Latin America. Its unique acquisition strategy, data-driven technology, and fintech product roadmap give the company an important edge inside the proptech market," said Evelyn Von Bischhoffshausen, partner at Kayyak Ventures. "We look forward to supporting aptuno on their mission to make renting easier and more efficient on every side of the transaction."

Renting homes in Latin America is hard for everyone involved.

• For renters: Listing information is low-quality and unreliable, and renters can have trouble finding co-signers that fulfill all requirements.
• For landlords: Long vacancy periods are common, as finding a suitable tenant with the income and collateral necessary takes months.
• For brokerages: Information for showing homes is similarly unreliable, and finding reliable tenants for landlords with vacancies is difficult.

These hurdles make obtaining proper housing time- and cost-prohibitive for residents and limits return on investment for landlords. Aptuno hosts qualified, quantity rental listings to help renters find homes while also helping them sign leases sooner by providing the financial insurance required by a market built on a lack of trust.

Aptuno was founded by Alejandro Gómez de Greiff, Juan Martín Delgado and Brian Requarth in late 2019. Aptuno has since grown to close an average of over 100 deals per month, host 1,500 unique listings, and has already closed 900 transactions in 2021, 11 times the transactions closed in the same period during the previous year.

About aptuno
Aptuno's mission is to provide liquidity to the multibillion residential real estate rentals providing a seamless end-to-end experience to an ever-growing set of digital-native renters. The company was founded in late 2019, launched its first product in April 2020 and today operates in Bogotá, CDMX and Medellin with over 1,500 unique listings making it the largest rental inventory in Colombia, with verified listings and transactional functionalities. Aptuno's team operates in decentralized locations in the cities where it operates.

SOURCE aptuno