by S BIRRUNTHA / pic by TMR FILE

MALAYSIAN-BASED property rental platform, SPEEDHOME, has raised RM7 million in a Series A funding exercise with the fund to be capitalised on the platform’s regional expansion and tech advancements.

Its CEO Wong Whei Meng (picture) said the funding is backed by insurers Allianz Malaysia Bhd and regional venture capital firm Gobi Partners.

He added that the investment signals promising support from the market towards the zero-deposit automated property rental platform.

“This fund will help us kick-start our regional expansion in Bangkok and accelerate our efforts towards making SPEEDHOME the region’s super app for property investors,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Wong stated that SPEEDHOME managed to soften the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the property industry with the introduction of its virtual viewing and homerunners services that addressed the restrictions posed by the various Movement Control Orders.

The platform recorded more than 160% year-on-year growth in gross written premium contribution to Allianz Malaysia in 2020 compared to 2019, thus proving its ability to grow even in the new norm and becoming a game-changing platform for the currently strained property investment industry.

SPEEDHOME claims to have helped tenants free up a total of RM37 million over the years through zero deposit rental.

Allianz Malaysia CEO Zakri Khir said digital partnerships are very much part of its strategy at Allianz Malaysia as it looks towards capitalising on new opportunities and new markets.

The group is equally driven to support local digital champions and start-ups like SPEEDHOME, and currently has over 50 active digital partnerships across various sectors.

“SPEEDHOME is also one of our first investments for Gobi’s SuperSeed Fund II; in fact, the company was one of the winners of our SuperSeed II Championship last year,” Gobi Partners chairman Thomas G Tsao noted.

To date, SPEEDHOME has over 575,000 app downloads and over 700,000 tenant enquiries in total.

The platform is looking to expand to over 128,000 listings here and regionally to 10 other metropolitan cities in the next five years, namely Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore, to emerge as SouthEast Asia’s PropTech Unicorn.