Real-estate virtual reality startup, Inspace has raised $4 million to support its international expansion to the US and UK.
The service, based at ACS’ Harbour City Labs, is aimed at Architects, civil engineers and property owners with an annual subscription allowing users to create as many VR experiences as they need.
Inspace’s investment round comes after the service saw an upswing in virtual services in the wake of the Covid lockdowns which saw the business’ subscriber base grow by 1300% over the past year.
Siobhan Casey, ACS Director of Scaleups and Innovation Labs congratulated the company on the investment, saying “Inspace joined Harbour City Labs in 2019 with only two desks, to help scale their business and it is great to see the successful close of their pre-series A of $4m, 20 months after joining now boasting 20 employees.
“Andrew Corbett-Jones, Head of Growth at Harbour City Labs and the ACS Labs team are passionate about creating sustainable tech businesses to tech savvy founders”.
Inspace founder and CEO, Justin Liang said “From Day One we had the vision to host the digital replica of every commercial building in the world and Covid has materially accelerated the adoption of our thesis in the industry.”
“We’re focused on helping our real estate customers navigate the Covid-enforced shift from physical inspections to digital walkthroughs.”
Inspace moved into ACS’ Harbour City Labs in 2019 after a stint at The Studio in the Sydney Startup Hub.
The company raised the funds in a Pre-Series A round led by Our Innovation Fund (OIF). The capital raising also included participation from Aconex’s Leigh Jasper, Investible and Artesian. As part of the round, OIF Partner Geoff Levy AO will join Inspace’s Board of Directors. Geoff was previously the Chairman of Cromwell Property Group and a Director of Mirvac.
Inspace’s existing customers include Dexus, Mirvac, JLL, CBRE, Blackstone, Brookfield, ESR and Lendlease. The service claims its Stack platform has enabled over $1 billion in real estate deals in the past month.
The capital raise enables Inspace to build on the rapid growth in adoption of its ‘Stack’ virtual property visualisation platform in Asia-Pacific markets, including Australia, Singapore and Japan. It also allows the company to help property firms worldwide to complete sales and leasing deals despite Covid-related travel restrictions.
Laurence Schwartz, Partner at OIF comments, “Justin is an exceptional founder building a world class team, product and company in an industry that is going through massive digitisation.
“Inspace is being used by leading real estate companies – Dexus, Mirvac, JLL, CBRE, among many others – and we believe our deep software background and experience in PropTech, as well as scaling businesses from Australia to the US will be very value-adding on Inspace’s journey ahead. As engagement with physical real estate becomes more digital, Inspace will be leading the way and we’re very proud to be partnering with Justin and the team to achieve this globally.”
“We have strong interest from the US market and our customers are taking us global. In twelve months we’d like to have a strong presence in the US and UK markets and host the portfolios of the largest real estate companies on our platform”, said Justin.
“Australia has an incredible property and technology reputation globally and we want to build on that and build a business we can all be incredibly proud of”.
