Co-working startup BHIVE launches fintech entity; raises $1M investment

Bengaluru-based co-working space BHIVE launched a new fintech entity — BHIVE Investech, an asset-light fintech company that will focus on democratising the commercial real estate market by providing shared ownership of large value properties.

The startup has raised and is in the process of raising $1 million seed funding from existing and undisclosed HNI's. This funding will be used for team building, technological development, legal, compliance and marketing.

BHIVE Investech will work as a fractional real estate investment platform.

Real estate for most Indians is the primary investment; RBI data shows close to 80 percent of household wealth is invested in real estate. However, the startup states, surplus investable capital of the middle-class and HNI’s has also usually been deployed in rental seeking residential assets.

Hence, this segment has become overinvested with rental yields languishing at a dismal two to four percent.

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Consequently, the resale market and price appreciation have also suffered over the past few years. In contrast, commercial office real estate can provide monthly rental yields of over eight percent with long-term capital growth potential intact. As a result, sophisticated institutional capital has been bullish on Indian commercial real estate despite the pandemic.

BHIVE Investech aims to bring the same opportunity to the Indian middle-class and HNIs through a data driven tech platform with a highly intuitive investor dashboard allowing for a hassle free investment experience.

“In a way, we had already become a wealth management company for HNIs by raising money from them, giving regular reports and giving the returns as promised. We have huge brand equity with the HNI community in our ability to give them returns. BHIVE Investech FinTech entity is a very natural progression of that journey”, says Shesh Palikar, Co-founder and CEO of BHIVE.

Founded in 2014, Bhive is backed by Blume Ventures, Raghunandan of TaxiForSure, and Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, Co-founders of Razorpay.

An investor of BHIVE, Alok Bajpai, Global Chief Financial Officer of Netmagic Solutions, added, “BHIVE Investech is another innovative and interesting concept from the BHIVE family, which not only will solve - through technology platform — many business and commercial space related needs in the community, but will also provide sound financial and investment needs of small and large investors. Just the way BHIVE was conceptualised and then executed ahead of its time as a solution to few office-space related gaps in India, this venture showcases the forward thinking and problem-solving mindset of its founders, particularly Shesh.”