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LATIN AMERICA • ENTERPRISE
Roxane Régnier
JAN. 5, 2018
Alquilando is Argentina’s finalist for Seedstars World 2018 competition. As Alquilando just raised a $700k funding in seed round, at Seedstars we wanted to ask Carlos Missirian the amazing co-founder, what helped them reaching this objective in Argentina.
Seedstars: Hi Carlos! Could you describe in a few lines Alquilando’s service and how it impacts positively the emerging markets?
Carlos Missirian: We are basically a 4.0 service that allows tenants and owners to rent long term properties easier, faster and simpler. With no bureaucracy attached, we help real estate brokers, banks and insurance companies to offer services and help these clients to reinvent the landscape.
S: Could you quickly explain your business model to our readers?
CM: We are a marketplace, so we earn a commission of each sale that a partner makes in the platform: be it a lease made by a broker, a loan given by a bank and collateralized by the insurance, or insurance that tenants use in lieu of properties as a collateral.
S: As a relevant stakeholder of Argentina’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, what do you think of it?
CM: Argentina is a great ecosystem, everyone is very supportive and reachable. It is evident as 3 of the 4 LatAm unicorns came from our country. The only hard part of Argentina is that the market is not as big as other countries in many segments. Thankfully, Buenos Aires is one of the biggest cities in the world and Alquilando does not have that main issue, but it is very common for startups and entrepreneurs to move to bigger markets.
S: Congratulations on your recent seed fundraising! What are your plans regarding that $700k fundraising and do you think participating in Seedstars World Competition helped?
CM: We plan to expand operations, mainly in sales, marketing and also in product development. Participating and winning the competition definitely helped us to tell our story better. The press visibility we got also helped a lot. It showed investors who were already interested that we were onto something and helped us increase our credibility.
As for the storytelling, when pitched on stage at Seedstars Latam Summit, the jury literally tore it apart. In the span of 3 days, we changed every single slide, every single word. We practised the whole weekend by sending videos and receiving feedback almost every hour. It was definitely worth doing it!
S: How do you see the future of Alquilando and what objectives do you have for the next few years?
CM: We see ourselves growing and becoming a larger, national and regional operation. Also expanding to other cities in Argentina and then regionally. We are bound by a clear north, to make it easier for tenants and landlords to rent, to make it more profitable, to generate a better landscape using technology to reinvent the market. In the mid and long-term, we imagine giving services that are out of the world like loans for property owners, insurances that really add value to their experience.
S: Any news to announce for 2018?
CM: We hope that we will be announcing that we won Seedstars World Competition in April! Now, talking seriously, we are baking some news: we are working on a mobile app for real estate brokers to turn themselves into a rental powerhouse and maybe a soft landing during the second or third quarter in a new city.
