Proptech company Estater has closed a $5 million U.S. Series A funding round with the participation of several “prominent” family groups from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, according to the company.
Co-founded in 2009 by Sanjay Goyal, Mahmoud AlJarrah and Roobesh Modi, Bahrain-based Estater leverages data science and AI to provide market intelligence about the residential and commercial property sectors. It is specialized in property valuation based on interactive geographic information system (GIS) maps.
Its basic free property valuation service lets a user pinpoint a property on the map and find out its up-to-date value. The company says its automated valuation model takes into account 100 unique features of a property to estimate its price, while users can also keep track of price trends.
Estater has collected and digitized the records of more than 2 million houses in Riyadh, Khobar, Dammam, and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia; Kuwait and Bahrain. The company says it has compiled more than 100 project feasibility studies, 150 market research, 30 outlook and 50 gap analysis reports for more than 100 clients in the last 10 years across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
With a staff of more than 50, it plans to use the fresh capital for product and tech development, employee growth and reaching new clients, it told media.
“Estater is the first company in the GCC region with its entire data on GIS maps. The use of maps makes all applications highly interactive for users,” said Modi.
“Estater is a unique advanced technology-driven revolution in real estate which brings the science of GISWorld, real estate, data science, 3D and technology clubbed together to democratize, [and solve the] issues of millions of users to get valuation (Estater meter) and market information-driven analytics (market intelligence). The various products are in the final stage of development and are expected to be released in the next couple of months.”
The proptech sector in the Middle East is coming on the radar of local and foreign investors. Aiming to plug digital inclusion gaps in the region, a property data specialist from South Korea, ZigBang, recently entered the Saudi market.