Round Hill Ventures (RHV), a venture capital firm incubated by Round Hill Capital (RHC), is poised to launch what may become the largest Europe-wide proptech fund.
In an interview with PropertyEU, Arnie Sriskandarajah, managing director at RHV, explains why Round Hill Capital entered the venture capital space – and why it sees a major opportunity, particularly in the European market.
‘For the last 10 years or so, tech companies have been chipping away at the core functions of the real estate industry,’ says Sriskandarajah. ‘From how real estate companies make investments and how development workflows are managed, to how we optimise space utilisation design to make it fit for purpose.’
Many parts of the industry were still ‘Excel-driven’, he notes. ‘Firms were working with historic data sets that third parties provided to them, trying to build an “information moat” to keep out competitors. The new entrants are changing the real estate business.’
RHV has over the past two years invested in 15 proptech start-ups in Europe and the US, operating in widely different fields from software platforms to geo-spatial tech companies and even a manufacturer of a new kind of ‘smart’ paint.
RHV is now ready to take the next step: set up a major European proptech investment fund, in which all its investments will be bundled. According to Sriskandarajah, it will be unique in Europe.
Read the full interview with Arnie Sriskandarajah in the latest edition of Firestarters
Round Hill Ventures is one of four participants at PropertyEU's live discussion at Provada in Amsterdam on June 5.
