Managed property fund EG announced the launch of EGX, a technology incubator aimed at helping build the future of the property and real estate industry across ANZ and globally.
Initiated in 2021, EGX already holds a portfolio investment of AUD $100m and is supporting three innovative and high growth firms spanning a wide range of growth areas in the Proptech market like digital twins, data analytics and intelligence, sustainability, and more.
EGX emerged out of EG’s ambition to advance our built world by bringing bright ideas in property tech to life. EG Funds aims to support the evolution of the real estate and property industry, and shake up the property landscape by getting behind the next tiny giants.
How is EGX shaping the future of the real estate industry?
EGX is fuelling the future of Proptech by providing Seed and Series A funding to founders with bright minds, strong values and leadership over visionary technology organisations that have an international reach ambition and require additional funding to scale up.
EGX’s goal is to scale these tiny-giant start-ups into high performing, global businesses, with a commitment to lead them all the way to their IPO while ensuring returns for investors.
Adam Geha, CEO, EG said: “The real estate and property industry is ripe for disruption. Technology is bringing amazing opportunities to the table and it is important that start-ups with ambitious teams and great ideas find the support they need to bring these ideas to life.”
“EG is constantly innovating to deliver the best, risk-adjusted returns for our investors and that clearly involves deployment of world-leading technology. This is why we launched EGX. It’s here to fuel the future of Proptech, and help solve tomorrow’s challenges for the industry. We address a gap in the collaboration between industry expertise and entrepreneurs.”
What are the tech priorities of EGX prior to funding?
Amongst the technologies that EGX are particularly looking into and that have the promise to drive the future of the real estate industry are digital twins, the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytics, sustainability technology, and more.
Tony Massaro, Partner, PWC Integrated Infrastructure, Real Estate Advisory said: “Real estate as an industry is on the cusp of having some great innovation as early adopters are scaling up. Proptech has become a fast growing segment of the real estate market, with new start-ups being created every week. The challenge is to identify and support the tech and business models that will realistically drive the industry forward and EGX is positioned to do that.”
With its multi-disciplinary team of entrepreneurs, engineers, and finance professionals, EGX has the ability to evaluate start-ups from a variety of perspectives, assist with scaling, mentorship and product development until companies are able to demonstrate a value-add product and are listed. Three Australian and New Zealand companies already backed
What Proptech are backed by EGX?
EGX counts on three high growth firms, each playing in a promising area of Proptech:
- Willow; Co-founded by EG, Willow is an Aussie-based firm that empowers asset owners and operators to make proactive, data-led decisions in real time to grow their profits, reduce their expenses and better manage risk, through the power of their innovative digital twin tech WillowTwin™. The firm has raised AUD$58m and is expanding globally.
- Reveal; This Kiwi company is helping cities and engineering firms look deeper by building a digital twin that provides digital accurate mapping for sub-surface infrastructure and enabling a future that is more accessible, more reliable and more connected.
Sam Wiffen, Co-Founder and CEO of Reveal said: ”The use of Digital Twins is growing because it provides unique insights that otherwise couldn’t be uncovered. We believe that applying this technology to sub-surface infrastructure has the potential to revolutionise many industry areas from property development to city infrastructure maintenance, and more.”
“Working alongside EGX not only has provided us with the capital needed to trial and fine tune our tech offering, it means we can speak to the right people, better understand and navigate risks, as well as identify the right strategic opportunities for our future growth and success. The EG Board has provided mentorship, encouragement and insights from their business expertise, which has been invaluable in helping us shape our company’s product and mission.”
- FLNT;This marketplace provides commercial real estate intelligence. The platform aggregates and maps a large number of internal and external data sets into one data lake in the cloud to allow the user to search, subscribe, visualise and analyse data at speed.
Albert Eichholzer, Executive Director, FLNT said: “Data is at the core of pretty much every tech innovation today – the demand for solutions that help firms manage and make sense of data is huge, and this is why FLNT is uniquely positioned to become a key player in this field.”
“However, while the Proptech market is very exciting and experiencing fast growth, it is also crowded. Being able to get support from investors and business experts that not only understand technology but also the intricacies of the real estate market is key to turning our ideas and ambitions into a reality, and this is why EGX makes a perfect partner.”
What does the future hold for EGX?
Raising a further $100 million over the next two years, Fintech on the horizon. EGX expects to grow its investment portfolio by an additional AUD $100 million over the next two years, and expand into the Fintech space which it sees as a key proponent in the Proptech market.
Sangeeta Venkatesan, Executive Director, EGX said: “We have already received incredible interest from third party investors, in particular as some of our portfolio investment firms are on track to becoming global Proptech players. The potential for returns in these high growth market segments is high, and our role at EGX is to multiply the impact of investors’ ROI.”
EGX’s leadership team includes recognised experts from the property and real estate industry, including Adam Geha, Chief Executive Officer of EG; Michael Easson, Executive Chairman of EG; Shay Ramalingam, Non-Executive Director of EG; Sangeeta Venkatesan, Executive Director of EGX; and Aprelle Coady, Investment Manager of EGX.
Start-ups interested in becoming part of the EGX incubator and investors looking to help build the future of real estate and property can get in touch with EGX at eg.com.au/egx
