Rent management startup Paymatrix secures first tranche of pre-Series A round

Hyderabad-headquartered Paymatrix, an end-to-end digital rent management platform, has raised $100,000 (Rs 70 lakh at current exchange rates) as part of the first tranche of its pre-Series A funding round, a company executive told TechCircle.

The startup secured this sum from a group of undisclosed investors through the angel network SucSeed Venture Partners. It aims to raise a total of $1 million for its pre-Series A round, Mukesh Chandra Anchuri, founder and chief executive of Paymatrix said.

The company will use the fresh funds to enhance its tech infrastructure and for marketing expenses, Anchuri added.

Paymatrix had previously raised $100,000 in total from a bunch of investors including Xseed Venture Partners, IIIT-H seed fund and IIIT-H Foundation.

Owned and operated by Speckle Internet Solutions Pvt. Ltd, the startup was founded in November 2016 by Anchuri along with Anusha Kurupathi Parambil and Muralidhar Nayak.

The company’s analytics-driven platform streamlines and automates rent payments and collections for tenants, landlords and property managers. It also provides customised rental agreements and tenant screening services. The platform allows tenants to pay rent or rental deposits through a credit card and also offers rental agreements online. It provides small-ticket loans to people to pay their rent deposits and monthly rent.

Paymatrix claims to have a registered user base of 15,000 tenants and landlords across 18 cities and wants to scale it to 100,000 users in 18 months.

The startup, which was a portfolio company of Axis Bank’s accelerator programme, was among five fintech startups shortlisted for PayPal's India Incubator Challenge in September 2017.

Hyderabad-based SucSEED is an angel networking platform that mentors, advises and funds startups through its members. The platform claims to have made over 20 investments so far.

The home rental space has recently attracted considerable investor attention. After securing $1 billion in fresh funding and expanding to multiple countries, budget hospitality chain OYO entered the home rental segment last month. Its new vertical called OYO Living will provide fully-managed shared residential units for young professionals and students.

In May 2017, home rental startup NestAway acquired Zenify.in. Zenify manages the entire lifecycle of a rental agreement.

In 2016, online rental property listing and management venture Azuro.in raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from early stage investors White Unicorn Ventures, Kae Capital, and Mumbai Angels.

The Indian online realty market has a number of players including 99acres, MagicBricks, PropTiger, Quikr, Housing.com and IndiaProperty. Online property broker PropTiger, which acquired Makaan.com in 2015, is part-owned by News Corp, the parent of this news website.