Union Investment acquires stake in PropTech firm Achitrave
German fund manager Union Investment Real Estate has acquired a 13% stake in Berlin-based PropTech Architrave for an undisclosed sum, both firms told REFIRE at EXPO REAL earlier this month, marking Union Investment’s first investment in a PropTech company.
Architrave specializes in intelligent real estate data management solutions. Union Investment has been a partner of Architrave since September and has added more than 400 of its properties to Architrave’s platform. The German fund manager will help Architrave to develop its AI component with a view to establishing an industry standard for collating real estate data in an open, digital platform. This will benefit property owners, asset managers, property managers and facility managers in equal measure, as they will gain access to a systematic and standardised database for each of their properties without any issues with interfaces or problems with information.
‘The investment in Architrave is our first advance into the PropTech sector,’ said Jens Wilhelm, managing director in charge of real estate, portfolio management and IT infrastructure at Union Investment. ‘The strategic partnership is a core element of our strategy of driving forward the process of digitisation in the real estate industry. With its established customer base and continuous expansion, Architrave is an ideal partner to realise our common vision of an industry-wide asset management data platform.’
Semantics – which can include hundreds of thousands of terms and definitions to facilitate closer data matches – has been a buzzword in the online space for a while but algorithms such as the ones used by Architrave are part of the new generation of machine-learning services.
Over time, the aim is to build a pan-European platform, Maurice Grassau, CEO and founder of Architrave, told REFIRE: ‘For now, we are focusing on Germany, although a lot of non-German assets are managed on our platform, which is in English, German and French. Our training docs mark in the relevant data from the start, which is then classified – extraction has a different algorithm because the machine learns rules by reading the data itself. Our aim is to get all properties in Germany digitalized as more companies come on board.’
The advantage of complete digitalization would be that real estate data is always accessible, which would speed up transactions. According to Grassau, Architrave’s data platform is hosted in highly secure German computer centres with maximum safeguards against unauthorised access and misuse. When a property is sold, Architrave transfers the real estate data to the new owner within the platform environment.
‘This marks a milestone in process efficiency for integrating acquired properties into investors’ portfolios,’ Grassau said.
In May 2017, Architrave took second place at Union Investment’s inaugural international PropTech Innovation Award, which attracted interest from 200 companies. Architrave has generated triple-digit revenue growth for the past five years in succession. This year, it is expected to generate revenue of around €2m, a figure that it hopes to double next year.