International property consultancy JLL India today said it has along with 1Crowd invested USD 5 lakh into Zipgrid, a fast-growing technology and knowledge services provider in community management space.
The deal, which saw active participation from Zipgrid's current investors represented by the 1Crowd platform, marks the closure of Zipgrid's pre Series-A round of USD 5 lakh, JLL said in a statement issued here.
"The investment will be used to fund the upgrading and upscaling of existing technology and operations, and to deploy a range of collective commerce solutions for individual residents as well as residential communities," JLL Technology Ventures head Anuj Nangpal said.
It is also JLL's third investment by JLL Technology Ventures platform, a dedicated vertical for making investments into real estate technology firms.
Zipgrid had earlier raised USD 2.5 lakh from 1Crowd that counts a number of C-level professionals as active members on its platform.
"The asset management space is transitioning into a managed services model where technology is starting to play a major role," Nangpal said.
He further said that JLL aims to partner with technology platforms with flexible architectures that can integrate with best-in-class technology tools.
"Zipgrid's tech-enabled property and asset management platform offers a seamless experience for residents, society managements and the property managers," Nangpal said.
"This platform is significantly more matured and we are keen to implement this solution in residential and commercial complexes across the APAC region," he said.
Over 35 million households reside in organised communities in the top 50 city clusters in India.
This platform represents a market opportunity of over US 2 billion and is slated to grow aggressively as such households increase to over 100 million by 2025, it said.
"Zipgrid's service model dovetails very favourably with the strict norms enforced by RERA and also addresses a market opportunity that will transcend beyond India into Asia Pacific with the support of the global JLL platform," Nangpal said.
Zipgrid, founded in August 2013 by Kunal Gupta and Jaydip Popat, provides tech-driven services to hundreds of housing and commercial communities.
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