The winning of this year’s MIPIM Startup Competition by local firm Spaceti has put the topic of property technology firmly in the Czech public eye, with industry players saying the proptech revolution has reached a turning point when it is set to have a major impact on our everyday lives.

Spaceti (which stands for Space Technology Innovation, pronounced Space-Tee) saw off the challenge from other proptech startups from around the world to win the MIPIM Startup Competition.

Founded in 2016 by former members of an IBM innovation team based in the US tech giant’s CEE headquarters in Prague, Spaceti designed a system that could alert the building’s occupants to emergency situations by using sensors linked to a mobile app. But the startup quickly realised its core technology of sensors could gather data about temperature, humidity, occupancy, space utilisation and other variables, which could then be used to address the “pain points” that occupants encounter on a daily basis, thus enhancing the satisfaction, productivity and wellbeing of the people in the buildings, while improving the bottom line for organisations. Using its team of talented, multilingual engineers based in Prague, co-founder Aakash Ravi says Spaceti has since grown quickly to about 50 people working on more than 50 projects worldwide with offices in New York, London and Stockholm.

But Spaceti is just the most visible of a growing army of proptech companies in the Czech Republic that are changing how buildings are constructed, managed and traded here.

Testing Ground

Although relatively small, the Czech real estate sector is proving to be a growth market for all kinds of proptech. Reasons for this include the current building boom that’s happening up and down the country across all segments, coupled with a cultural comfort with IT and technology. Being small, with a good mix of old and new buildings, as well as a relentless focus on keeping costs low, the Czech Republic is regarded as a good testing ground for many of these new real estate technologies being developed.

Spaceti and others like NUCity, which develops digital service books and social network platforms for buildings, also cite how the Czech Republic is a great place to build new technology, given its highly talented but relatively low-cost local workforce. If implementing the technology is economically feasible here, then it will certainly work in higher-cost markets like the US and Western Europe.

These proptech startups use big data, modern analytics and property metrics to serve all parties operating in the built-up environment – city authorities, landlords, tenants and service providers – as well as with all types of buildings, old and new.

The various real estate parties use the new data being gathered in different ways. For landlords, providing amenities based on the data is a way to keep tenants when leases are up for renewal – especially important when new, more flexible alternatives such as coworking spaces are appearing on the market. For tenants, the data is a way to use existing space more efficiently as well as encourage their landlords to invest more in their properties to provide such amenities as smart parking. And for service providers, it is a way to offer clients new value-added services and help deepen existing relationships with them.

Coworking providers, which are mushrooming in cities like Prague (see our recent blog on the topic here), are big potential users of proptech, which can help them become more efficient and provide new add-on services, thereby allowing a greater focus on hospitality. 

A question some are starting to ask is whether in the long run service providers will establish/acquire their own proptech divisions. Savills’ proprietary investment arm, Grosvenor Hill Ventures, has made a number of investments in promising technology opportunities, including taking a 10% stake in YOPA, the digital hybrid residential UK estate agent, as well as Proportunity, an AI-based startup focused on real estate valuation, and VuCity, the first digital ‘smart Cities’ platform focused on making planning applications faster and easier.

Today, you cannot imagine your car without software. And while we’re not quite there yet in terms of real estate, few doubt that in the not-so-distant future building software will become as integral to everyday life as the software-driven electronics device that’s parked in your garage.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Contact Savills Office Agency