Israeli investors place bets in real estate tech sector

COMPUSCHMOOZE


 

 

Israel is well-known as an incubator for advanced technologies and amazing scientific breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medicine and cybersecurity. Now, Israeli investors are turning their tech investments to focus on new ways to make one of the world’s oldest investable assets—real estate—more efficient.

The field is called “proptech,” for “property technology,” and a recent conference in New York brought Oded Eliashiv, principal of BuiltUp Ventures, a new Tel Aviv- and New York-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage proptech companies to the Big Apple to showcase his portfolio of companies.

BuiltUp Ventures (builtupventures.com) is owned by Besadno Group (besadno.com), an investment firm based in Jerusalem. Because the parent company invests in a wide range of high-tech and real estate startups, it made sense to create the separate investment fund company to focus on real estate, manufacturing, logistics and retail technology, Eliahsiv said in a recent interview.

“We have we have one foot in Israel where, you know, it’s referred to as a startup nation that provides a lot of different technologies, and one foot here in the U.S.,” he explained. The firm’s investment goals involve providing technology solutions to a sector that in the past has not always been open and receptive to the use of technology, Eliashiv said.

“Understanding how things work here in the U.S., that’s part of our expertise, because we are in that domain,” he said. “We understand their needs.”

The companies in BuiltUp Ventures’ portfolio are developing tools that let real estate companies use the large amounts of data collected from development and management activities to analyze their operations.

Augmind (augmind.me) develops augmented reality (AR) tools that can be used for 3D animations and other walk-through illustrations of buildings and models of products. On its website, Augmind demonstrates how it created a holographic presentation of the late Israeli President Shimon Peres for a technology conference in 2018, two years after his death.

One of the most interesting companies in the portfolio focused on actual property residents is MTtech (mttechs.com), which is developing smart kitchen counters that include touch screen tablet technology alongside cooking surfaces, so you can refer to online recipes while you are preparing a meal. Similar smart table technologies can create a computer-embedded work surface for sales or hospitality professionals.

One company, Swathly (swathly.com), is developing a tool to analyze data from manufacturers and shipping companies to help firms identify new potential markets.

Xtate is developing an automated social media advertising solution for realtors that’s powered by artificial intelligence.

SolidBlock (solidblock.co) is creating a way for property owners to offer investors fractional ownership shares using secure “digital tokens” to represent the ownership shares.

SkySaver (skysaver.com) is developing an emergency evacuation system for high-rise buildings.

Eliashiv thinks part of Israel’s success in developing advanced technologies has to do with the country’s isolation in the past. “Israel ultimately had to come up with its own solutions and developments on its own merits,” he said. “The whole nation is built around enabling entrepreneurs by giving them the right tools.”

In Israel, investors tend to give startup companies lower values initially, Eliashiv said. But because BuiltUp Ventures has a presence in the U.S., it is better positioned to give Israeli companies access to US investors, and create more value for the companies sooner, he said.

Email me at steve@compuschmooze.com and tell me about your favorite advanced technology from Israel. Follow @PodcastSteve on Twitter.

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