Finnish tech property startup Blok has raised €3.5M in a funding round led by Swiss Ringier Digital Ventures. Blok is a digital real estate agent that automates routine tasks of apartment sales through its online platform. Blok’s automated workflows allow their real estate agents to handle up to 10 times more volume, and on average, sell apartments 30% times faster than their competitors.
“An average Finnish real estate agent sells 25-50 apartments per year. Blok’s agents sell approximately 250 apartments per year while maintaining an industry-leading NPS of 90,” Blok CEO and Founder Rudi Skogman explains.
According to Skogman, the Nordics is one of the most advanced European regions in terms of adoption of technology in real estate transactions. Blok’s platform leverages on this, enabling both digital transactions and online bidding. Blok also uses artificial intelligence in their apartment valuation algorithm and offers online property displays with their 3D solution.
“In Finland, we close nearly 75% of apartment sales completely digitally and 100% of the bidding happens online. While other European countries are catching up in these numbers, we believe several new markets will be ready for us within this decade. We’ve already opened offices in Sweden last year and we will expand to 20 European countries by 2025,” Skogman continues.
Blok already has prominent investors such as Lifeline Ventures and Bonnier Ventures on board. Now Ringier Digital Ventures, the venture capital arm of Ringier, an international marketplaces and media group, brings new insight and resources for Blok’s international expansion. Ringier owns several leading online marketplaces in Europe, Asia and Africa and believes that the future of marketplaces lay in facilitating transactions online.
“Ringier Digital Ventures sees huge potential in the digitization of the real estate market and Blok’s transactional layer is highly advanced and the product has shown solid growth numbers in the Nordics. We strongly believe that many more countries will switch from paper-based selling and buying processes to digital platforms and that’s why we’re confident that Blok can scale their business even faster,” Ringier Digital Ventures Managing Director David Hug says.
Blok is a digital real estate that automates routine tasks of apartment and house sales through its online platform. Since its founding year 2017, Blok has sold apartments worth of EUR 0.5 billion.
About Ringier Digital Ventures
Ringier Digital Ventures AG is a Ringier AG company. The focus of the venture capital firm, founded in January 2015, is investing in innovative digital start-ups that can benefit from the extensive media reach and expertise of successful companies within the Ringier and btov network. Since January 2018, Marcau Partners GmbH, founded by Thomas Kaiser, David Hug and Benjamin Solenthaler, is responsible for the development of Ringier Digital Ventures.
