Letter to readers: Does Patrick Grove know something we don’t?

Dear readers,

Buying or renting a property is likely to be your biggest expense. It also remains a painful process, despite the many tools available at our disposal.

Patrick Grove surely knows this. After all, he has spent a good part of his life starting, running, and eventually selling iProperty, a leading property marketplace in Southeast Asia.

And recently, he has started and invested in Instahome, a rental-focused property platform that promises to inspect every home that it lists.

Image credit: Instahome

While Grove is leaving the day-to-day operations to Instahome’s CEO and his former chief of staff, Eric Tan, he’s certainly putting his money where his mouth is.

Meanwhile, other proptech players caution if Instahome’s high-touch business model is sustainable. After all, personally visiting every property listed on your site to snap pictures is no easy feat.

Regardless, as one proptech startup founder puts it, it’s good that someone is giving this a shot.

It’s also encouraging to see successful entrepreneurs like Grove invest in the next wave of startups.

There’s no lack of motivation: As we discussed in our in-depth report, Southeast Asia could very well enter a golden age, which means there plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs to make a mark.

(By the way, if you work in a startup, do help us with this survey that gauges the state of startups in 2020. 50 survey respondents stand to win a quarterly Tech in Asia subscription.)

Other regions certainly aren’t getting left behind. Plenty of video streaming players are vying for the attention of consumers in India, and the space is attracting plenty of funding.

In Bangladesh, a startup hopes to become the Tencent of the country by turning its successful keyboard app into a broader ecosystem. Similar stories are playing out across different countries, from Vietnam to Malaysia to Thailand.