PropertyGuru: Southeast Asia’s Proptech Giant

Globally property and real estate is the most significant store of wealth and the largest global asset. The world’s real estate is worth over $320 trillion and is more valuable than all global equities and debt securities combined, and worth almost four times that of global GDP. Over the past two decades the huge size of the global real estate market has given birth to a generation of “proptech” companies making different parts of the industry more efficient. While proptech first started in the United States and created companies like Redfin, Trulia, Zillow, Airbnb and more, the industry has increasingly gone global over the past decade.

In Southeast Asia a quiet proptech boom has been underway for the past decade. As of 2023, there are 548 proptech companies operating from Asia, with Singapore and China hosting nearly half these companies. The poster child of Southeast Asia proptech boom is Singapore-based PropertyGuru.

PropertyGuru is Southeast Asia’s leading proptech company that offers a digital marketplace for agents, buyers, sellers and renters of homes as well as suite of data, marketing and home financing services. PropertyGuru was founded in 2007 by Jani Rautiainen and Steve Melhuish and is currently available in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and Vietnam. In March 2022 PropertyGuru listed on the New York Stock…