GREE Ventures, the investment arm of the mobile gaming giant, has expanded its Southeast Asia portfolio as the lead in Indonesia real-estate startup UrbanIndo‘s preferred Series A funding. Other participants include Japanese-US investment firm IMJ FENOX.
The amount of funding was undisclosed, but UrbanIndo co-founder and Arip Tirta told me that it’s in the seven figure range. The company is the latest investment GREE Ventures has made in Indonesia. While the investment firm’s portfolio is currently made up mostly of Japanese companies, it has ramped up its forays into Southeast Asia over the past six months. Back in January, GREE Ventures participated in top Indonesian e-commerce fashion platform Berrybenka.com’s Series A round and in April it led Singaporean beauty retailer Luxola’s Series A.
The Southeast Asia market has been on GREE Venture’s radar since the firm was established as a wholly-owned subsidiary of GREE in 2011. In addition to Southeast Asia and its home country of Japan, GREE Ventures also looks for potential investments in East Asia.
Launched in 2011, UrbanIndo bills itself as “the most innovative real estate search in Indonesia.” The startup seeks to simplify the process of searching real-estate llistings by allowing users to query directly on a map. Features include neighborhood reports, similar properties and price distribution analysis of a neighborhood within a specific listing.
“The online real estate marketplace in Indonesia is shifting as users rely more and more on market data and tools to make the right decision in buying, renting or selling properties. UrbanIndo is the only online real estate marketplace in Indonesia to combine thousands of property listings with up-to-date market data and local information at the users’ fingertips,” said Tirta.
UrbanIndo will use funds from its Series A to scale up, add to its management team and pursue strategic partnerships. Its earlier investors included Japan and Southeast Asia-based East Ventures.