Philippine developer Filinvest announced an agreement with Plug and Play, a leading Silicon Valley tech company, to assist with moving proptech forward in the country. In a joint press release, the two firms noted their partnership is designed to promote innovation in the Philippine property sector.
The goal for Filinvest is to develop and utilize real estate and smart living innovations. The partnership with Plug and Play lets the homebuilder connect with startups from around the world. Customers, employees and partners could all benefit from the proptech advancements that will help the developer to solve business challenges.
“We see that smart, digital technologies will drive the future of the property industry. We want to leverage tech as much as possible to transform our business, engage our customers and locators, as well as help make a lasting, positive impact to the local communities,” Filinvest President and CEO L. Josephine Gotianun-Yap told the newspaper.
See more: What is proptech and why does it matter in Southeast Asia?
How will Filinvest use proptech?
Funding proptech is a key part of Filinvest’s plan to invest in new advancements and technology-driven businesses. The firm is encouraging department heads to locate new opportunities that can be improved or transformed via proptech.
“For instance, I recently talked about how drone inspection of Filinvest projects and properties will allow us to perform checks of various locations while safeguarding the health of our people,” Yap told the website. “This kind of innovative and practical solution, along with other noncontact tech-enabled interactions in our properties, will not only be helpful during this time when community quarantine are in place, but also in a post-Covid-19 setting.”
Plug and Play was founded in 2006. The platform has more than 10,000 startups and 300 official corporate partners and allows for the facilitation of introductions and meetings to stimulate collaboration opportunities.
Filinvest isn’t the first property developer in Southeast Asia to invest in proptech. One of Thailand’s largest developers, Sansiri, announced that it would invest USD47.3 million in proptech between 2018 through 2020 via its Siri Ventures arm.
“It is helpful to have forward thinking real estate developers invest in and sponsor proptech. In our experience, a fruitful outcome is when both strategic investor and VC come together to help build an ecosystem. In this way, strategic investors get access to useful technology advancements while VCs help startups to grow and capital plan their business trajectory,” Pauline Chong, Principal at Cento Ventures, explained to Interesting Asia. “The more engagement we have from real estate corporates, the better inputs there are to technologists to build better solutions.”
