South African proptech platform Flow, an app that rewards tenants for good behaviour recently raised R10 million ($1.5m) from venture capital firm Kalon Venture Partners and a similar amount from an international VC firm to help bring sanity in the real estate market in South Africa. Founded by serial successful entrepreneurs, Daniel Levy and Gil Sperling (Popimedia co-founders), Flow rewards tenants for registering, adding their property details, paying their rent on time, looking after their homes, and much more. Tenants can use the app and be rewarded for good rental behaviour even if their landlord isn’t active on the app. Great tenants can earn thousands of points every month, increasing their Flow score and accessing incredible rewards. For these rewards, Flow has struck partnerships with a number of leading brands in the lifestyle, entertainment, homeware, fashion and travel space, all of which are valuable within the lives of millennials (those between the ages of 22 to 37) – a group which makes up a large portion of renters in South Africa. The co-investment of R20 million by Kalon Venture Partners and the international VC will help Flow fuel growth and increase the base of tenants already using Flow; as well as to increase the range of rewards available to tenants. According to Gil Sperling, CEO of Flow, “Compared with any other industry, the property industry – and in particular the rental market – is archaic and disconnected. There’s also a massive paradigm shift in how people should rent which is inspired and driven by their lifestyle choices, and is something proptech could and should leverage big time. People are used to being connected all the time and transacting digitally, in real-time; and they want transparency in their dealings with companies (including their landlords).” Flow aims to scale and revolutionise the economics of rent, providing a more seamless experience and more value to tenants. “At Kalon Venture Partners we invest in technologies that are disrupting their respective industries and have large target addressable markets. Flow passed both these criteria with flying colors and also passed our most important investment criteria which is having the ‘A’ team. The three founders have all built successful businesses, which is quite rare in South Africa, and have the ‘execution intelligence’ to grow a product into a large profitable enterprise” said Kalon venture Partners CEO, Clive Butkow. Kalon in November invested in financial services chatbot providers FinChatBot.
