Real estate-focused Renewate Infrastructure Technologies Pvt Ltd on Wednesday said it has raised a pre-seed round of funding led by early-stage venture capital firm Better Capital.
Renewate will use the funds to increase its product offerings and expand its presence across India, it said in a statement. The firm did not disclose financial details of the transaction.
The Pune-based startup was founded by husband-wife duo Debashree Ghatak and Supratik Ghatak in 2018. The founders have decades of experience in real estate and technology.
Renewate offers a platform to help renovation contractors, property improvement professionals and agencies manage their business digitally by automating certain processes like documentation, measurements, estimation and invoicing.
The platform comes packed with latest augmented reality and artificial intelligence technologies that can be accessed by users in their native language, it said.
Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital said that property-improvement professionals and contractors are still using archaic methods for running their businesses. Renewate's platform is filling an important gap by digitizing contractors with a mobile-first vernacular-first app that brings simple yet powerful tools to help them work smarter, he added.
Renewate seeks to tap into India's property improvement market that it says is upwards of $50 billion.
There have been a few investments in real estate platforms in the past few months after funding in such startups had slowed since the peak year of 2015.
MPowered, an asset management services provider to real estate owners, raised $21 million in its pre-Series A funding round from a group of US-based high net-worth individuals in July.
In March, Strata Property Management Pvt Ltd, a real-estate investment-tech startup, raised a seed round of funding led by SAIF Partners and Mayfield India.
In January, real estate software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform MultiplyMyLeads.com raised an undisclosed sum from investors including Frontline Strategy Funds and SucSEED Venture Partners.
In September last year, prop-tech firm Square Yards raised $20 million from media house Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) and Japanese real estate investment company Genkai Capital.