Bidrento is an Estonian-based developer of software for landlords and property management companies to easily manage residential rentals, co-living, student housing and commercial real estate portfolios. Taavo Annus, CEO of the company talked to Property Forum about the latest trends in proptech development, war-related challenges and plans for the new year.
December is a standard time for summaries and plans. What has 2022 been like for Bidrento?
Bidrento has grown strongly this year: we expanded to new markets, and our customer base grew significantly in Europe. In a very short time, Bidrento has become the most preferred software for managing rental houses and portfolios in the Baltics and we are expanding across Europe.
Also, I can not mention that Bidrento won the award for the best real estate technology company in the European start-up competition "The Europas Awards”. The real estate technology category competition was tight, and it covered the entire European Union. This victory in Europe is a great recognition for Bidrento. I believe that our software received this prestigious victory due to the way we solve many complex problems in real estate management with a product with an easy user experience that has many different options for automating the work of real estate managers and accountants.
In the rental management software market, competition is fierce and gets more and more intense every year. What makes your platform stand out from other such solutions?
Bidrento offers much-needed tools for the whole rental property cycle management. On average we replace 3-5 different programs and as a result, our customers benefit from the time and money savings. Bidrento has a low entry threshold or no cost at all so Bidrento provides rental real estate owners and managers with affordable property management tools that are at the same time powerful and able to fully support our customers’ fast growth.
We are not a one-function product and by today we have a very solid product that is used by real estate funds, build-to-rent companies, pension funds and etc.
Also, Bidrento allows our customers to manage their portfolios in different countries, with different currencies, and even multi-currencies are available for our customers. I believe that there are a very limited amount of solutions that are able to provide all of this with a very user-friendly product.
Having everyone in the company focused on the customer, being in front of customers, listening to customers, and designing services with customers. We’re really good at this.
Taavo Annus
CEO
Bidrento
You claim that by using your solutions, it is possible to reduce the energy consumption of tenants by up to 20 per cent. How exactly are these savings to be achieved?
We have one of the most complete solutions for rental property management in Europe and thanks to that we are able to affect also different verticals, including energy consumption and sustainability. Depending on the customer profile (commercial or residential real estate) and functionality used, our initial calculations with our customers already now are showing on average 15% decrease in utility consumption. Some of the tools are already available for our existing customers for example our modules related to the utility and cost allocations and in the coming few months, we will make those and also additional tools available for new customers.
How are you going about raising finance for the further development of the platform? The war in Ukraine is having a rather deterrent effect on those investing in startups...
I believe for those startups who don´t have any traction and just started to develop their product current times could be hard.
Bidrento already has a comprehensive product with customers across Europe from the beginning and also now we are supported by well-known co-founders of Pipedrive and Bolt. Because of our already established business and presence on the market, we are getting approached by different VC companies with investment and other proposals. When you already have a well-established and good product with strong traction, then investors are approaching you even during the hard times.
As a result of rising inflation and high-interest rates, the PRS segment in Poland has excellent prospects. Do you intend to take advantage of this?
Yes, of course. PRS customers benefit a lot from Bidrento and this segment is very important for us and we are seeing strong demand from this segment.
Increasingly important with inflation and rising interest rates will be the total cost of the project. So you need to be efficient and use the right tools to help automate as many business processes as possible to help reduce administrative costs as all other cost bases increase. More and more attention should be paid today to automating different workflows and here our software is designed to help large property owners.
What plans does Bidrento have for the next 12 months?
Bidrento is growing fast and we are confidently moving to the next year with the clear target to be at least 15 times more successful. New functionality and modules soon will be available for our customers to further support and help the growth of our existing and new clients' businesses. And of course, we are also expanding our team, so hope to at least double the whole team.
