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Exclusive: Askporter reveals plans to raise significant ‘Series A’ cash next year

Artificial-intelligence based chatbot platform says it has major plans for expansion in UK and overseas as its tech finishes six-month 'pioneers' programme with letting agents.

Nigel Lewis

chatbot

Chatbot property maintenance platform AskPorter is to launch a substantial ‘Series A’ cash raise next year despite admitting that a ‘funding winter’ is on the horizon for proptech firms in the UK, it has told The Negotiator.

As the company emerges from its six-month long programme of refining its artificial-intelligence based platform in partnership with four letting agents, it will soon require more cash to roll out a more ‘end to end’ product in the UK but also in Germany, the US and Asia.

“I think investors are going to start scrutinising businesses much harder when making funding decisions, but AskPorter’s exciting potential and our track record among investors like Google, puts us in a good place,” says its COO Curran McKay.

AskPorter’s platform automates the ‘mundane tasks’ that eat up so much of a letting agent or facility manager’s time by learning to answer the questions tenants often ask, and helping manage repairs, contractual queries and myriad other daily tasks.

“What letting agents are most interested in is AskPorter’s ability to significantly increase the number of homes managed by each property manager,” says McKay.

“Particularly after the fees bans in England and Wales, agents want to find out how they can increase the ratio from, say, 120 properties per person to 200 or even 250 and therefore reduce costs.”

The company has been running its six-month ‘pioneers programme’ with Sussex-based outsourced lettings provider Four Percent Property, Let-Leeds, London firm POD Lettings and residential block management giant Warwick Estates.

“This programme is getting very close to being completed – but these things take longer than expected particularly when it comes to block management and the complicated freeholder, leaseholder and tenant relationships it entails,” he says.

Curran says AskPorter can reduce a relatively complicated property maintenance task involving several players from a 36-minute process to three minutes via just ‘two clicks’.

 

 

October 28, 2019

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