Islamabad: The UK-based Venture Capital (VC) firm Pi Labs has closed a $90 million fund to back property-tech startups that aim to transform the real-estate sector.
The new fund, which was oversubscribed, marked the firm’s third and largest to date since it was founded in London in 2015. Pi has backed 60 companies across 15 countries and intends to back at least a further 50 with its latest raise.
Pi Labs’ Fund III is set to focus on identifying and investing in early-stage startups that address each stage of the real-estate value chain while searching for startups that address sustainability challenges in the sector as property owners race to meet decarbonization goals.
The VC firm would also weigh up investments in technologies that addressed emerging challenges and opportunities, such as the future of work, robotics, and the development of the metaverse, with a view to almost doubling the number of startups in its portfolio by 2025.
The fund intends to invest in global startups from pre-seed to Series A stages, with average deal sizes between $500,000 and $1.5 million and follow-on capital set aside for later-stage rounds.
Faisal Butt, the CEO and founder of Pi Labs, said the raise was “unprecedented for a fund that primarily targets early-stage property-tech ventures” against the backdrop of the pandemic.
“Our fund being 40% oversubscribed positions us to deploy significant quantities of capital, alongside blue-chip institutions, into global markets where proptech startups are reshaping real-estate sub-sectors prime for disruption,” he said.
The new fund introduced a number of blue-chip institutional investors, such as APG, a Dutch pension provider; Aldar Properties, a developer in the United Arab Emirates; Sellar, a real-estate developer in London; King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership; and a number of developers in Hong Kong.
Butt said the “global profile” of the latest fund’s limited partners reflected “the surge in allocation toward the proptech sector.”
He said that Pakistan is an attractive market and foreign investors as well as some multinational companies are eyeing this market with interest.
