German furnished apartments startup Wunderflats grabs funding

Berlin-based Wunderflats, an online platform for furnished apartments, has secured 3 million euros in funding. The investors included Creathor Venture, the IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft’s VC Fonds Kreativwirtschaft, ECONA AG and unnamed family offices.

PRESS RELEASE

Berlin, November 16th, 2017 Wunderflats (wunderflats.com), a leading online platform for furnished apartments, raises €3 million from Creathor Venture, the IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft’s VC Fonds Kreativwirtschaft, ECONA AG and family offices. The financing round serves new product innovations and further growth.

The number of furnished apartments in Germany has doubled within the last 4 years . In order to enable easy renting and letting of these apartments online, Jan Hase and Arkadi Jampolski founded the property tech company Wunderflats in 2015.

On www.wunderflats.com you can rent a furnished flat for one month or longer with just a few clicks. All apartments are fully furnished and can be used as official places of residence, while the rents include all ancillary costs. Valid accounting statements are issued for corporates and freelancers. The offer is particularly aimed at professionals, consultants, freelancers or expats who are completing extended work-related stays outside of their hometowns. But also job starters or job changers who are moving to a new city for their first job or for a new job benefit from it.

Compared with hotels, furnished apartments provide more comfort and privacy, while companies save on average 40% of their accommodation costs.

Jan Hase, co-founder and CEO, about Wunderflats’ future: “We see the segment’s future in Housing as a Service. That means: Everything around living, including the apartment itself, is turning into a service that can be used as easily as Netflix or carsharing — no matter whether you are currently living in Berlin or Paris. Today, this begins with furnished apartments and cleaning services. Next will be laundry services, breakfast and the nearest fitness studio. People are already using more and more services today and together with our investors we will build Wunderflats to be the platform that enables a future with Housing as a Service.”

Since the beginning of 2016, Wunderflats’ turnovers have increased by more than 60% each quarter.

One factor of success thereby is that renting the apartments is done paperless. Additionally, Wunderflats is the only platform on the market that offers instant booking for selected landlords.

This feature allows for rental contracts to be signed instantaneously, similar to booking a hotel. It shows how much more professional renting out furnished apartments has become. Wunderflats’ landlords provide high-quality furnished apartments with up-to-date availabilities – that is new for the housing industry. For landlords, Wunderflats provides a reach to more than 1000 selected business partners, verifies potential tenants, takes care of the apartments’ photography, automatically advertises the apartment on partner real estate classifieds like Immobilienscout24 and handles the contract signing and payment. The landlords’ effort per apartment reduces by approximately 80%. This time can be used to invest in better interior equipment or the expansion of housing stock.

Christian Weniger, partner at Creathor Venture comments: “Just as carsharing is increasingly replacing traditional car sales, the long-term commitment to an apartment is replaced by temporary living or Housing as a Service. Wunderflats reduces the complexity of the rental process for companies, tenants and landlords, especially by automatically verifying the tenants’ solvency through its complete online payment handling, as well as by providing additional services such as cleaning. We are convinced that the team, led by Jan Hase and Arkadi Jampolski, will continue the impressive growth story of the company.”

Matthias Grobe, business analyst with IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft comments: “The supply of furnished apartments in Germany increases every year. This is a reflection of the changing living habits of people. The journey through life for many people is more flexible and less dependent on the location – projects at work are in Berlin, later in Frankfurt and then again in Paris.

Wunderflats is developing into the central platform for companies, tenants, landlords and service providers, that makes this change a reality. Wunderflats makes it easier for everyone, for example by providing online bookings including payment handling, appointment management, as well as identification and solvency checks. This very fragmented market is one of the exciting mega trends we are observing.”

About Creathor Venture
Creathor Venture invests in technology-oriented, fast-growing companies in all stages of their development, especially in the fields of Specialized Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Industry Tech and Enabling Platforms. The regional focus is on Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and the Nordics. From its offices in Bad Homburg (Frankfurt), Zurich and Stockholm, the team of 18 staff actively support more than 30 ICT and life science companies in development, growth and internationalization.

Creathor Venture’s management team consists of the Managing Partners Dr Gert Köhler, Karlheinz Schmelig and Cédric Köhler, and the Partners Christian Leikert, Dr Christian Weiss and Christian Weniger. The team has been investing successfully in start-ups for over 30 years and has conducted more than 20 international IPOs during that time. Creathor Venture currently manages funds of more than EUR 220 million. As the largest investor in its funds, the management underlines its entrepreneurial orientation.

About IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft
IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft (www.ibb-bet.de) provides venture capital to innovative Berlin-based companies and has established itself as a market leader in the field of early stage financing in Germany. The funds are used primarily for the development and market launch of innovative products or services, as well as for business concepts of creative industries.

Currently two of the funds managed by the IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft are in the investment phase, the VC Fonds Technologie Berlin II with a fund size of 60 million euros and the VC Fonds Kreativwirtschaft Berlin II with a fund size of 40 million euros. Both VC funds are financed by means of the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) and the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE) administered by the State Berlin. Since 1997 the IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft, in consortia with partners, has made 1.25 billion euros available to creative and technology-orientated companies; thereof, the portion invested by IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft itself, as lead, co-lead or co-investor, was approximately 173 million euros.

About ECONA AG
The ECONA AG is an investment holding based in Berlin. Since 1999 ECONA is investing into young, fast growing companies as a Business Angel or Co-Founder.