Funding hub is the first Italian company specialised in offering alternative finance to leading real estate developers. It allows real estate companies access to much more flexible forms of financing than traditional channels, usually represented by crowdfunding platforms and other types of so-called traditional investors.

“We specialise in selecting and evaluating only the best investment opportunities, and are able to do this thanks to a sophisticated evaluation process that we have developed over the past few years,” explains Niccolò Pravettoni, CEO of Funding Hub. “This is why different categories of investors rely on us for access to these high-investment opportunities they would otherwise be unable to find on the market.

Funding Hub started dealing with alternative financing in 2018 and in about 3 years it has already financed about 50 investment opportunities throughout Italy by disbursing more than 20 million euros which have allowed its investors to benefit from returns of double digits on an annual basis. “We are currently focusing on acquiring new professional investors, both Italian and international, and our goal is to raise over 100 million euros within the next three years,” Pravettoni announced.

Funding Hub has chosen a streamlined and highly efficient structure made up by a young team that has always been passionate about new technologies and aims to bring them into a traditional sector such as real estate. By also collaborating with highly qualified professionals with decades of experience, it is able to develop new skills in order to offer its investors an optimal service.

Keep up to date with news from FD Community and the Italian fintech world

BY SUBSCRIBING TO OUR NEWSLETTER

Reviva is the first startup created to liven up real estate auctions’ buying and selling. It uses predictive models and machine learning along with an experiential marketing process to reach potential buyers in the traditional real estate market, making them aware of the auction market and helping them find the right property for them. The goal is to help them understand its true value and get them to buy at a fairer price.
We interviewed Co Founder and CEO Ivano De Natale.

How was the idea of REVIVA born ?

Italy has the sad record of being the country with the highest number of NPLs in Europe: loans that banks have given and debtors have not been able to repay. There are calculated to be about 325 billion circulating in the Italian system. When an NPL is guaranteed by a real estate the only way the bank has to recover its credit and the debtor to repay it is by auction but, due to a cumbersome and obsolete mechanism, 72% of the auctions in Italy are deserted. This means that nobody shows up to buy the properties which are then sold after 5 years on average at a price much lower than their market value. This has a strong impact on creditors, who are unable to recover the amount paid, debtors, who are unable to repay, and the company suffering from liquidity. In addition to this, the value of the auctioned houses pulls down the value of the properties put up for sale on the traditional market. Our solution was to founding Reviva.

How does Reviva affect the industry?

We have managed to increase real estate auction sales by 43% and one out of four times our buyer is the one who wins the property because he or she has understood its value. All this has a positive impact both for banks and creditors who are able to recover larger sums, for debtors, who are able to repay, and on society, which finally has a more prosperous economy thanks to the injection of liquidity.

What stage of growth are you in?

Right now we are in the growth phase and we have already positioned Reviva on the market: we are recognized as a leader by our clients.
As far as fundraising is concerned, so far we have done bootstrapping: my partner and I invested all our savings initially in the company and then we invested all the profits in marketing and technology. We are launching our fundraising campaign which will take place in three parts, one part as convertible financing by an institution, another part with equity business angel financing that also brings experience and a third part through crowdfunding. We will finish our campaign by December 2020

What do you expect from entering the Fintech District?

Entering the Fintech District allows us to create and build relationships with other startups and companies and institutions in the financial world. During this period, actually,we are about to conclude a partnership with another fintech that is active in the real estate lending and crowdfunding branch.

What is your team like?

Our team is composed of 16 people all located in the tech, data science, administration and commercial areas. The average age is between 25 and 30 years old: my co-founder partner is 30 and I am 38, together with some other commercial people we are the oldest in the company. To find some older people you have to look at the advisors: nine of them who helped us in the first years of our startup and who have an average age between 45 and 55 years.

If you wish to stay updated about news, events and initiatives of the Fintech District, subscribe to our newsletter HERE

The third edition of Fintech Nights, scheduled for March 3rd, will be dedicated to Proptech. On the rooftop of “Copernico Isola for S32” we will recount the evolution of this sector between Shared economy, Smart real estate & Real Estate Fintech, together with our community of startups and some big players who have been invited to illustrate their point of view on how the real estate world is changing.

Why proptech?

In the last year and a half, the number of Proptech startups operating in Italy has almost tripled from 40 to 108. Of these 68% are based in Northern Italy (half of them in Milan) and just under 10% coming from abroad (Spain, Estonia, Holland, Portugal, USA, Switzerland). The sector is growing strongly and appears to want to reach the levels of Germany (238) and Spain (305), but is still far from Great Britain with its 805 proptech startups (PropTech Monitor 2019 data). There is also a big gap in terms of funding involving hundreds of millions of euros in the UK market and a few tens of millions in Italy.

In the Italian proptech scenario we have chosen to explore, there are vastly different realities which, according again to Proptech Monitor, can be divided into 4 categories: 30% operates in the real estate fintech category (brokerage, crowdfunding, investments and auctions), 25% in the professional services category (blockchain to validate products and processes, marketing, consulting and management), 25% in the sharing economy category (community life management, hospitality and short rentals, event spaces, marketing, coworking) and the remaining 20% belongs to smart real estate (facility & property, smart building, VR and AR).

On the occasion of the third edition of Fintech Nights, we will further deepen our knowledge of the topic by giving an overview of the sector,thanks to the insights from our members, and illustrating the future trends indicated by our international community. We shall end the first part of the evening with Applied Innovation cases. In the second part some big players like Airbnb will be our guests and explain their vision of the evolution of proptech in Italy and in the modern world, followed by a Demo Session Startup with Crowdestate, Walliance, Re-lender and Housers.

At the end of the session you are invited to stay with us for the cocktail party: a special moment of networking under the stars on one of the most beautiful rooftops in Milan!

For more information and registration, click HERE