Badi: the new rental app that wants to take the stress out of flat-hunting

Move over Spareroom, there's a new rental app in town 
Badi's founder and CEO Carlos Pierre
Badi
Amelia Heathman10 January 2019

Finding the right place to live can be one of the most stressful processes. You have to decide: where to live, what your budget is, before trawling through apps and websites to find somewhere affordable, clean and with "normal people".

Spanish start-up Badi wants to simplify this process. After launching in Barcelona back in 2015, the app is the number one platform across Spain and last year it started its European expansion, adding cities including Paris, Rome and London to its offering.

CEO Carlos Pierre launched Badi after feeling frustrated with the process of renting a room in Barcelona. At the time, he was working for PwC and was having to trawl classifieds to try and find a suitable place to live.

In particular, he didn’t like the way there was no chance to check and verify the other people who lived in the property already, and vice versa.

“If you’re going to live with people, you want to know them and have a conversation and some information before you invite them to see the flat,” he tells the Standard.

Badi is announcing today that it has raised £27 million ($30 million) in Series B funding, led by US-based venture capital firm Goodwater Capital to fund its expansion across Europe.

What you need to know about Badi

When sitting down to design Badi, Pierre knew the app needed three things: information about the listing, including decent pictures, security and verification of that information, and the ability to make connections through the platform.

That’s why the majority of Badi’s users log in through their Facebook profile, so you can verify that they’re a real person and who they say they are. As well, Badi has an in-built chat function so renters can chat to their prospective flatmates securely, without having to give away any personal details such as phone number or address.

London is one of Badi's key cities for 2019
Badi

The platform also uses artificial intelligence to match up flatmates. When you sign up, you input information includes age, gender, language, personal traits, and characteristics such as professional or student. The algorithm shifts through the listings to find the right places for you.

This helps to improve the efficiency of matches. “Based on needs and characteristics, it makes it simple and faster to connect both sides of the marketplace,” says Pierre. “Machine learning, in this case, has helped a lot and in the future will be the cornerstones of our product.”

Another Badi feature helps to facilitate transactions. If a renter wants to secure a room, say by paying the deposit or the first month’s rent, they can make that transaction through Badi’s escrow system, made possible through a partnership with payments start-up Stripe. Badi will hold this money for 48 hours and if there are no issues for the renter and the landlord, or other tenants, after this period, the funds will be released.

“Renters are able to have a commitment on the flat and claim it before other people,” says Pierre.

Series B funding and beyond

The new Series B funding brings the total investment into Badi to £35 million ($45 million). This will allow Badi to grow its staff from 65 to 100 and continue to add new features to the platform to solve those renting pain points, including a calendar functionality to schedule visits and manage bookings.

Badi has an in-built chat function so renters can chat to their prospective housemates securely
Badi

For 2019, London is going to be a major focus for the start-up. “London has one of the largest real-estate sectors in Europe and there’s very low supply and very high demand for rental properties,” says Carol Jiang, Badi’s global MD who heads up the London office.

“Especially in the next few months with Brexit, we typically forecast that fewer people will want to buy property and more people will want to rent. This will allow Badi to become a further solution to the housing issues that we see.”

Property tech (proptech) is a booming trend, particularly with millennials. In London alone, there’s the concierge service app Homie, as well as Movebubble to connect you with agents, and OneDome, that scores postcodes depending on factors like safety, transport, and greenery.

Given that Brexit is expected to push rent prices up even further, any company that wants to make this arduous process better is surely onto a winner.

Badi is available to download on iOS and Android

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