By Adedapo Adesanya
One of Africa’s property technology (proptech) startups, Spleet Africa, has been selected for MetaProp’s 2021 Accelerator Programme, making it the first from the continent to join the Accelerator programme.
The MetaProp Accelerator is the world’s foremost proptech accelerator, founded by MetaProp; a New York-based venture capital firm focused on the real estate technology industry.
As part of the accelerator’s 22-week coaching and advisory period, Spleet will also receive up to $250,000 in funding from the VC.
Speaking on the development, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Spleet, Mr Adetola Adesanmi, said joining the accelerator is a catalyst towards achieving the company’s goals and further driving its value proposition as well as opening up new opportunities for the growing proptech startup ecosystem in West Africa.
“Over the last 3 years, we’ve worked very hard at Spleet to hack a highly valuable but hard to crack segment of Africa’s real estate market.
“Our goal is to power hassle-free rentals, for our landlords and tenants, and bridge the trust issues that currently exist between both parties.
“We are expanding to Ghana and Kenya, and are looking to other African markets. All these haven’t been easy, and has meant tapping into every available resource,” he said.
The company’s ambitious plan is to tap into the unexplored proptech market in Africa, which accounts for only one per cent of the global market share.
And with more than $23.8 billion in global property tech investment, Mr Adesanmi said he and the team are excited to be starting the MetaProp accelerator programme in September and will maximize the opportunity.
On his part, the co-founder and general partner at the VC, Mr Zachary Aarons, believes proptech will most likely be the next wave after fintech.
“The Nigerian fintech ecosystem has been absolutely on fire recently. Guess what usually follows fintech? It’s proptech. I have spoken to two high-quality Lagos based proptech companies in the past week alone,” Mr Aarons said.
Founded in 2015, MetaProp’s investment team has invested in over 130 technology companies across the real estate value chain.
Aduragbemi Omiyale