June 21, 2016

Realla aims to become leading commercial property search platform with £1.5m fundraising

Realla.co, a commercial property search engine and marketing automation business, has raised £1.5m from a group of property and technology investors led by Lord Young of Graffham, Kirsh Family Office and Lloyd Dorfman’s Esselco Group.

Realla seeks to address the fragmented way commercial property is marketed by offering a single, well-presented platform for tenants, investors and agents to source property along with professional features to help commercial agents and landlords market and manage all types of instructions in a highly automated, trackable fashion.

The company was founded in late 2014 by Andy Miles, formerly a property investor at British Land and Ian Parry who co-founded Globrix.com, a free-to-list residential search engine acquired by Zoopla in 2012.

Since the platform went live only eight months ago, Realla has gained significant traction with five of the top ten commercial agents already using its marketing automation software. The investment will be used to accelerate growth by building the search engine’s user base and investing in new technology to further strengthen the offer.

The Realla search engine allows users to search the entire market for commercial property and provides insightful information to help them make informed decisions on purchasing or leasing property. It offers the largest index of available commercial property in the UK, with over 2 billion sq ft of space aggregated from over 1,000 sources across the market.

Andy Miles and Ian Parry, co-founders of Realla, commented:

“Realla is answering a fundamental need to modernise the way commercial real-estate is marketed and discovered online. Creating a ‘Google-style’ search experience for commercial property is part of that need. Realla aspires to become the most comprehensive commercial property website, making information more transparent and helping the market to become more liquid. We are delighted that our new investor group includes some of our early customers, which we believe supports our conviction in Realla’s unique offer.”

Philip Lewis of Kirsh Family Office commented:

“Realla has shown impressive growth and we are delighted to continue investing in this exciting young business, which we have been supporting and financing since inception. Ian, Andy and the team are passionate about delivering the leading online commercial property experience to tenants and investors, as well as being the best online marketing partner to the industry. We are also delighted to welcome some well-known real estate investors and agents to Realla’s new investor group and advisory network.”

Simon Murdoch, partner at VC firm Episode1, commented:

“Realla has the potential to be a major utility for the commercial property industry and I’m delighted to support them in their next phase of growth.”

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