Fintech specialists, QED Investors, has backed its first company in Indonesia, a Proptech firm Pashouses. The VC firms led the $5 million pre-Series B round. Pashouses is an end-to-end transactional marketplace for buying and selling houses in Jakarta, from brokerage and renovation to staging and mortgage.
QED notes that it has invested in 12 Proptech companies worldwide. Globally, QED has invested in more than 200 companies across 18 countries. QED Investors has invested in 28 unicorns and has $4.3 billion under management, according to the company.
Pashouses was co-founded by Indonesia-born HBS grad Junghans Tasani and Bin Anindita, who studied at INSEAD, Pashouses looks to leverage technology to help create a path to home ownership. Still, very early in its development, Pashouses is said to have processed 12,000 seller submissions and facilitated 2,000 house visits from buyers, leading to 500 transactions. Tasani, CEO of Passhouses, said they are excited to tap into QED’s experience in Fintech.
QED Investors Partner and Head of Asia, Sandeep Patil, said that similar to India, they see opportunities for companies to make lasting change that is enormous for the country:
“Southeast Asia boasts a vast and growing economy. Taken together, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam would be the seventh-largest economy and third-most populous country in the world. With a median age of 30 years, it is no wonder that smartphones are everywhere, and tech is being adopted across all walks of life.”
Patil added that owning a home is an important part of the culture but the current process is incredibly complex, explaining there are no cenbral database like the MLS in the US.
“Buyers search for homes in classified ads or through signs at the front of the house, sellers ask friends for referrals of brokers they have used in the past, agents drive around neighborhoods asking people one-on-one for leads on potential properties that might be available. Imagine buying a home before the internet. That is still largely the process in Indonesia today. The process is opaque, but digitization has the potential to remove a lot of this friction.”
He noted that approximately 40% of Indonesians are unbanked today, yet smartphone penetration stands at around 62%.
