Brothers Stanley and Jeremy Fourteau arrived in Barcelona with the idea of offering a solution for those workers who move from one country to another and have to find a place to live for a while with each move. The startup Ukio manages and rents flats for a minimum stay of one month and has just raised 7.6 million euros (9 million dollars) which should allow it to expand its model throughout Spain. The round was led by the French venture capital fund Breega and saw the participation of other funds such as the Danish Heartcore Capital and the American Partech. It also managed to attract angel investors Iñaki Berenguer, founder of Coverwaller, and Avi Meir, founder of Barcelona-based Travelperk.
Ukio started in 2020 with an initial capital of 2.2 million euros, which it secured through Heartcore. After consolidating a portfolio of 100 apartments in the Catalan capital and Madrid, with an occupancy rate of 95% this year, the startup plans to reach other cities in the country and European capitals.
The first has been Lisbon, where it has just landed, but it foresees three more European markets during 2022. According to its estimates, it expects to be operating 700 flats in six European capitals and register a turnover of between 15 and 20 million euros by the end of next year.
The origins of this startup based in the Catalan capital lie in the personal trajectory of its founders. Stanley Fourteau was responsible for opening the market in Latin America for Airbnb and, logically, ended up moving a lot. "Ukio was born when my wife and I moved to Barcelona because, after spending our whole lives changing homes and repeating the same process over and over again, we realized that the market had not changed or evolved and had not been digitized either," Fourteau explained in an interview with The New Barcelona Post. "We arrived in Barcelona two and a half years ago, but it took us more than six months to feel at home. This cannot be," he stressed.
The differential feature of the startup is a careful selection of apartments, which are individually furnished and decorated. Apartment owners lease them to the platform for a period of seven to ten years, and Ukio is responsible for finding tenants and dealing with them. Specifically, they can book through a completely digitized process, with keyless check-in, and have 24-hour customer service.
The founders want to ensure that the entire process is as easy as possible for tenants, "maintaining the convenience and comfort felt at home," even if they are many kilometers away. With this approach, the entrepreneurs also want to avoid the fragmentation of the residential market into many actors ---property, owner, real estate agency...---, encompassing the entire process.