SweepBright expands its proptech services to the United Kingdom

Belgium-based property technology start-up SweepBright is continuing its international expansion with the launch of an office in Britain and the appointment of Stephan Engelen as Chief Operating Officer.

Engelen will lead the commercial expansion of SweepBright. He brings extensive management experience to SweepBright following senior executive roles at companies including Cisco Systems, Philips Business Electronics, as well as experience leading & supporting start & scale-ups such as iText.

The UK efforts will be spearheaded by Neel Pattni, who has more than 10 years' experience in sales in the UK proptech sector.

Founded in 2016, SweepBright enables real estate agencies to do away with the conventional, time-consuming manner in which listings and contacts are created and managed. This enables them to dramatically increase efficiency, automate low-value tasks and as such, compete with incumbents such as online and hybrid agencies popping up everywhere.

SweepBright has customers in various countries including Belgium, France, Spain, Israel and Australia and looks to the UK as its next major market opportunity.

SweepBright CEO Raphael Bochner said to win in the competitive real estate industry, agents needed to leverage technology to facilitate world-class digital marketing, and offer the best possible customer experience. Existing platforms are largely outdated systems dating back to the ERP era and can't cope with the needs of modern real estate agencies. SweepBright is a very flexible platform which lets agencies easily pair other apps to it so that they can create their own perfect digital workspace.

Engelen said his experience in general management and finance, as well as sales and marketing, came at the right time for SweepBright, which is rolling out its platform in key markets in Europe.

Last year, SweepBright raised €2.3 million from Cennini Holdings, QuaeroQ and a number of private investors. Existing investors Volta Ventures, In The Pocket's Jeroen Lemaire, and Pieterjan Bouten and Louis Jonckheere from Showpad also took part in the raise.

Volta Ventures Managing Partner Frank Maene said there was still a lot of room for improvement in the real estate industry when it came to operational efficiencies.

"SweepBright is facilitating that shift, enabling real estate agencies to focus more of their time on clients," Maene said. "Raphael Bochner knows the industry better than anyone. He has developed the solution. Now it's a matter of rolling it out as far and wide as possible."

On the back of the latest funding round, Bochner said SweepBright would continue to expand its sales and development teams, as well as boost investment in R&D with the expansion of its data capabilities.

SOURCE SweetBright

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