Álex Purull and Kàstor del Olmo are part of a generation forced to live in rented accommodation. Faced with this reality, the two young Barcelonians have decided to transform a bad experience into an ambitious project. Both wanted to find an apartment and ended up involved in a sector where processes "had barely changed in the last 20 years." Personal experience and necessity have led them to create Néster, software with which to digitize and automate tasks associated with renting.
Néster provides a platform for real estate agencies and small landlords that allows for comprehensive and easy management of the entire life cycle of residential rental. The initiative aims to facilitate the entire process from uploading a real estate asset to a web portal until a contract is signed, including security deposits, deposits and monthly payments, and even incidents that may occur in the property.
"We are a generation witnessing the changes that have occurred in tourist rentals with platforms like Airbnb, but these advances had not yet been applied to long-term rentals," explains Kàstor del Olmo. Tired of the procedures to find what was going to be their next home, the confinement ended up giving them the impulse they needed to make Néster a reality.
Tired of the procedures to find what was going to be their next home, the confinement ended up giving them the impulse they needed to make Néster a reality"During confinement we decided to accelerate the project. Home sales began to plummet and we observed that what kept agencies alive was rental management," comments Del Olmo. With the market practically closed in the first months of the pandemic and the implementation of teleworking, they began to develop the startupthanks to the implementation of technologybig dataandmachine learningin the entire process.
By the end of 2020, they managed to launch a first version of the software with a significant customer base. The company itself has been responsible for developing the necessary technology to provide security to the infrastructure and offer solutions for an all in one emerging company in the proptech sector.
The tool, which lands in a strongly traditional market, combines functions that allow the user to automatically publish homes on real estate portals, identity verification, tenant scoring or valuation, and the automation of rent payments, among other services. Bringing these processes together in a "complete, simple and secure" way has allowed the company to gain more and more followers and its clients to increase their property portfolio by 23% in less than a year since its launch.
During this time, the team led by the two young people has received purchase offers and has met with Ibex 35 companies. The startup is about to announce its first investment round, which has had the support of large national venture capital funds and executives from the real estate sector. With a capital injection of around 250,000 euros, they want to continue growing and increase their market share in the country, without losing sight of the rise of this business model in other countries with companies such as HelloAlfred in the United States or Quinto Andar in Brazil, which reach a value of more than four billion dollars. "The forecast is that in two years, three at most, we will be moving in an annual turnover figure close to 20 million euros," concludes Del Olmo.
The tool combines functions that allow the user to automatically publish homes on real estate portals, identity verification, tenant valuation and the automation of rent paymentsThey rule out becoming a digital real estate agency and, far from labels, they want Néster to be an added value for companies in the sector: "We saw that the product fit in small agencies, but also in large real estate companies and developers that are interested in our software."
In a market increasingly oriented towards residential rental, this new proptech is born, which already has a team of 14 professionals and aims to reach 22 employees. The company is optimistic and hopes that digitalization has landed in the sector to give it impetus and promote changes.
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