Australia-based real estate agent marketplace OpenAgent has raised A$12m ($9.2m) in a round led by Reinventure, the corporate venturing arm of financial services provider Westpac, Australian Financial Review reported yesterday.
Venture capital firm Qualgro and VC fund Breakthrough Labs also took part in the round, which increased OpenAgent’s overall funding to A$20m since it was founded in 2013.
OpenAgent runs a free-to-use online marketplace for estate agents that lets users compare sales and customer reviews. It claims to have matched more than 10,000 customer with agents in the past year, and will spend the cash on adding new features including a home valuation tool.
Marta Higuera co-founder and co-CEO of OpenAgent, told AFR: “We figured out that comparing agents was very important, but there are a lot more things that come into the process that technology can help with still.
“One of the hardest things was deciding what to do with the little money we had. There is a lot of things we haven’t been able to put into practice because we did not have the resources.”
South Africa-headquartered financial services firm Hollard Investments invested A$6m in OpenAgent in June 2015, after the company had received $2m in earlier angel investment.