Urbanmetry Raises $2 Million In Pre-Series A Funding Round Led By Monk's Hill Ventures Funds will be utilized to develop intelligent data products and platforms to serve end consumers in the property and mortgage markets and to build product, technology, data, and business development teams

Urbanmetry, an AI-driven city and property data company, on Tuesday announced to have raised $2 million in pre-Series A round led by Monk's Hill Ventures. Funds will be utilized to develop intelligent data products and platforms to serve end consumers in the property and mortgage markets and to build product, technology, data, and business development teams. Urbanmetry will accelerate the development and adoption of its mortgage data products and platform. The company also plans to expand its repertoire of city databases to other south-east Asian cities.

"For years, our engineers have been building in-house artificial intelligence and data-powered solutions to help banks, government, and property developers better quantify risks and opportunities in the real estate market. However, the data gap is detrimental to both key industry players and individual homeowners alike. Going forward, our team plans to push the technological envelope further to better fund homeowners and build sustainable cities for our shared future," said Koh Cha-Ly, founder and CEO, Urbanmetry.

Real estate is the largest asset class globally. Yet, like its brick-and-mortar nature, it is the hardest to fund. In developing cities, the lack of reliable data compounds the issue, making mortgage underwriting particularly complex, risky, and as a by-product, expensive. To increase liquidity and affordability, there is a need for mortgage risks to be objectively quantified, fragmented, and traded, said the company in a statement.

"The property mortgage industry is typically opaque, with valuations that are often subjective or subject to conflicts of interest. The opportunity to leverage data science in providing a data-driven underpinning to the mortgage process is immense. We are excited to be working with the deepest real estate data science team in the region to tackle a difficult but high-impact problem. The end goal is to provide access to affordable and fair mortgages for south-east Asian homeowners." said Kuo-Yi Lim, co-founder and managing partner, Monk's Hill Ventures.

Urbanmetry is building a platform to deliver this much-needed functionality for the mortgage market and has launched Nowcast, an AI-driven service that helps homebuyers forecast the value of their homes based on machine learning from 90 city data variables. Urbanmetry offers products for the homeowner. Urbanmetry today has over 150 corporate clients in the region including UEM Sunrise, Kuok Group Berhad, RHB Bank as well as the World Bank. The company has seen sustained growth over the pandemic and is profitable.