• Proptech is a growing sector in South Africa, as more tech startups look to make an impact in the space.
• One startup doing so is Flow, which recently completed its pre-Series A funding round.
• Raising $4.5 million, the startup aims to use it towards further developing its property advertising API and rolling it out to more platforms.

There are a number of burgeoning industries in South Africa, all of which are propelled by innovative tech startups.

These include the fintech, insurtech, agritech, and proptech sectors, with the latter showing significant growth of late. One of the key operators in that sector locally is Flow, which recently announced the completion of its pre-Series A funding.

Raising roughly $4.5 million during the round, Flow now plans to put that investment to work on rolling out its latest API, which automates the advertising of properties on social media platforms. This is on top of the behavioural search that powers its platform currently.

With a handful of social media platforms integrated at the moment, Flow plans to add more, including TikTok and LinkedIn. Included in this would be more traditional advertising like billboards, although that would be to bring attention to the property platform itself than any specific properties.

The ability to assist real estate agents with advertising homes for sale/rent is seen as a true step forward for the platform, which hopes to garner more interest from agents on the back of this recent funding and expansion plan.

Speaking to TechCrunch on its journey so for, co-founders Gil Sperling and Daniel Levy note that Flow now features more than 300 clients, which comprise property developers and real estate agencies.

Added to this is an estimated 6 000 agents across SA, some neighbouring countries, Mauritius, and Australia. They are also in talks to expand to some countries in Europe, so this recent funding is the start of some big moves at Flow.

Moving forward, it looks like the enterprise channel will prove crucial to the platform’s growth.

“Our route to market, for the most bit, has been going door-to-door from franchisor to franchisee to different offices within that group. And over the last couple of months, we’ve identified the enterprise channel, as we call it, which is more associated with strapping on our technology to portals,” explained Levy to TechCrunch.

“So our next phase of traction and growth will come from those relationships, which are significant in our world. And that’s why we’ve just gone through this capital raise to experiment with that essentially,” he concluded.

[Image – Photo by Maximillian Conacher on Unsplash]