London-headquartered Hubble has raised £1.2 million in a funding round led by Firestartr. The other investors who poured in the capital include 500 Startups, Maxfield Capital, and Concrete, the PropTech fund backed by Seedcamp and Starwood Capital among others.
Hubble will utilize the fresh inflow of funds to build, what it is calling as the world’s first digital commercial property advisor. With this technology, it envisions to replace commercial property agents to deliver instant, intelligent solutions in office rental transactions for SMEs. Hubble’s CTO, Tom Watson, commented,
This new funding allows us to build a platform that will be able to deliver an unlimited number of rental transactions at zero marginal cost and reduce average transaction time from 3 months to 3 weeks.
It will also focus on expanding its existing platform across various cities in the UK and beyond.
Hubble’s CEO, Tushar Agarwal, in an official statement, says, Brexit is proving out to be a boon for them, as SMEs that generally would prefer to sign long-term office leases are turning to Hubble to look for flexible terms as a hedge against the uncertain economic environment. Alexander Lazarev, Partner at Maxfield Capital, said,
Our vision is for Hubble to be the world’s first artificially intelligent commercial property company by 2020.
The startup was incorporated in 2014 by Tushar Agarwal, CEO; Tom Watson, CTO; and Rohan Silva, who had also founded another PropTech startup Second Home. It began by assisting small startups in searching spare office space.
The digital platform helps the businesses rent office space without the use of a broker. It now claims to have over 30,000 businesses signed up, with more than 20,000 desks available to rent on a flexible basis across London.
Alexander believes commercial property industry will follow the same digital transformation as residential. He adds,
With 30% of the office sector estimated to be flexible by 2030 (from just 3% in 2010), this is a huge macroeconomic shift in how the world uses physical space.
