The future of proptech in Asia lies in AI, VR, and blockchain

Photo credit: everythingpossible / 123RF Stock Photo

This is a Discuss post, where we feature short but insightful opinions from the Asian tech community on startup, entrepreneurship, and tech topics.

Proptech in Asia is on the rise. According to an article by SCMP, the region accounted for over 60 percent of global proptech funding. A study by KPMG also shows that real estate decision makers are increasingly seeing the potential in proptech.

But despite the interest, real estate continues to be a slow-moving, traditional sector. So, what are the trends in Asia’s proptech scene and how can these help overcome industry challenges?

Julian Kwan (CEO of InvestaCrowd), Albert Ovidi (COO of JLL Asia Pacific), and Hari V. Krishnan (CEO of PropertyGuru Group) share their thoughts.

Editor’s note: Answers have been edited for clarity.

Julian Kwan, CEO and co-founder of InvestaCrowd

We’ve finally got the first big corporates putting proptech accelerators together. This means that corporates are interested and that there’s some money, networks, and brainpower. That’s really exciting for the industry. Since real estate is typically very slow, high-level involvement is fantastic.

I also think blockchain initiatives and projects are definitely starting to ramp up. This makes sense. If you think about the real estate industry, it’s extremely transactional/transaction-based. The reason there’s so many people involved in it in terms of middlemen is because there’s high-value transactions, there’s a lot of paperwork, and there’s a lot of information.

Another trend is that people will start issuing shares of real estate investment on the blockchain, issuing digital tokens and assets as a representation of that shareholding. This means that transactions will be much more transparent and liquid.

The challenges of the industry is that it’s very traditional and employs old-school thinking. There’s a lot of large incumbents and real estate transactions, and it take months to do anything. Another issue is that properties are very expensive. So, a lot of people are priced out of the market. 

There are also a lot of players—middlemen that don’t want to let go of the fees that they’re charging. This is where blockchain will be able to help.

Let’s discuss