Brazilian-born entrepreneur, Eduardo Saverin relocated to Singapore in 2009. Yes, Eduardo Saverin of Facebook — he has already rose to fame in Asia. After leaving Facebook where he had sold more than half of his stake in the social networking platform and has been working by investing in promising startups.
It’s really an environment that has been under-invested by venture capitalists. If you look at 2015, in the West there is arguable between $50 and 60 billion poured into VC. But if you look at Southeast Asia, it’s about $1.6 [billion], and in India it’s around $8 billion.
Saverin said. His recent investment in 99.co, a Singaporean house-hunting service founded by local prodigy Darius Cheung is making him proud. In a recent 2nd anniversary celebration of 99.co, he praised Cheung saying,
He’s evolved a business that is highly qualified and really has two very admirable traits in the startup world, First is the relentless focus. You have so many resources, you have a grand vision, you need to focus. Second is ruthless execution.”
Cheung became a famous entrepreneur when he sold mobile security startup tenCube to McAfee in 2010. He is now hunting to take on established competitors such as PropertyGuru. That’s a tactic Cheung thinks will turn traditional industry models on their head.
99.co has an interface which is similar to Airbnb which ranks rental and sale listings not by fees, but by completeness and timeliness of information. More photos, commuting times or even local dining options makes your property come up the ladder, whereas in competing services, agents paying more gets better exposure. When a House hunter will make an inquiry then only property listers are been charged.
Cheung commented that people used to buy properties with no basic knowledge and further said,
We don’t take money for ranking, what we can do is to use that as an incentive to make agents behave better.
