Detached: Airtree & CBA-backed proptech handed to directors after increase makes an attempt fail

Residential property administration startup Completely different, has been handed to directors, unable to draw new capital, regardless of being backed by Airtree and the Commonwealth Financial institution’s enterprise arm, X15.

Seven-year-old Completely different Applied sciences Pty Ltd was positioned in voluntary administration with KPMG on Thursday.

Based in 2017 by expat Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Mina Radhakrishnan, a former Uber international head of product at Uber, and her husband, Ruwin Perera, whose CV contains Google and SoftBank, :Completely different digitises property administration duties involving paperwork and admin for homeowners, traders and renters.

The startup raised $1 million in seed funding from the likes of AirTree Ventures, Silicon Valley’s Basis Capital, and actual property agent Tim Foote when it launched. CBA’s x15 Ventures made an undisclosed funding in 2021 and Completely different was added to the CommBank app, to assist property traders. The corporate has 1000’s of homeowners, tenants and properties on its platform and continues to function underneath administration.

In a message to workers yesterday, Radhakrishnan stated they’d been attempting to boost funds however didn’t “safe sufficient to proceed working the enterprise because it’s at the moment being run for any vital time period” and the board determined to nominate KPMG as voluntary directors.

“Suffice to say the capital markets for scale-ups at our stage of development are extremely difficult proper now,” she wrote.

“We’ll work carefully with KPMG to offer what now we have constructed the most effective probability of getting an ongoing constructive affect.”

They known as a halt to the corporate’s development and integration of its Completely different for Companies product and are actually engaged on a “easy transition of administration over time”.

“Whereas this isn’t the vacation spot that we had been hoping to realize with :Completely different, each Ruwin and I are terribly grateful to each one in every of our workers for becoming a member of us on this journey so far, and grateful for the arduous work and energy that you’ve got put in,” she stated.

Mina Radhakrishnan can be a board member of the Tech Council of Australia.

A spokesperson for KPMG stated they’ve “commenced an pressing evaluation of the enterprise with the intent to start an orderly sale of :Completely different’s belongings and mental property as quickly as attainable”.

An absence of ongoing capital for future development echoes an analogous failure for an additional high-profile Airtree funding, Milkrun, with the grocery supply service shutting down in early April simply weeks after founder Dany Milham minimize staffing by 20%, saying it might give the 19-month-old enterprise sufficient runway for 12 months. The model was subsequently acquired and revived by Woolworths in late Might for a rumoured $10 million, having raised greater than $80 million from VCs.

One other Airtree funding, on-line furnishings retailer Brosa slid into voluntary administration in late 2022. It had raised $2 million from AirTree Ventures in 2015, then an additional $5 million in a Collection B in 2017, backed by AirTree, BMY Group, and Bailador. ASX-listed on-line retailer Kogan.com paid the directors $1.5 million for the corporate’s belongings. However the collapse left Brosa prospects $5 million out of pocket alongside traders.