Infabode

Idea

Introduction

Infabode connects industry professionals with key information and data from the Real Estate industry through a members only platform.

Infabode aims to reduce the amount of time people spend trying to access key information from the Real Estate industry and allows its community of members to customise the content that they have access to.

Companies provide their industry information and data to Infabode in exchange for the increased marketing reach. The platform boasts over 400 industry partners and thousands of pages of industry data.

The Infabode vision is to initially become the 'go to'​ place for all global industry research and information, enabling users to customise and access this data with ease. Beyond that, Infabode wants to become the platform from which other online real estate products can integrate into- effectively becoming the to go place for all industry information, data, transactions and products.

Intended impact

The Infabode CEO was left frustrated at both university and his initial jobs when trying to access industry information, as he explains below:

"Google is great for finding a single fact but as soon as you want to analyse a market or sector it quickly becomes information overload & you're required to click on (and often sign up to) multiple websites.

We quickly identified that this problem was especially an issue in the Real Estate industry. Thousands of companies were releasing valuable industry information & data for marketing purposes but only to their existing clients. The problem with this was two-fold... it was hard for companies to reach new potential clients & those that were trying to find this information was lost in Google or only getting information from a single source."

We felt that if we could have all of this information in one place and we could allow each user to customise the platform to their own interests, then we'd have a very powerful platform."

Substantial accomplishments to date

March 2016 - The official launch of the company at MIPIM Cannes. Although the company had been founded years before, it remained in beta mode while the prototype was being developed.

June 2016 - The company has raised a total of £853,000 since launch, including a successful equity crowdfunding campaign. Most of the investment has come from highly regarded industry professionals.

August 2016 - Just five months after launching, Infabode had over 100 content providers registered. This exceeded the initial target of 100 in the first year.

December 2016 - Infabode reached the milestone of 200 content partners.

March 2017 - Infabode celebrated it's first anniversary at MIPIM Cannes, recording a new record of over 100,000 pages of industry information on the platform.

October 2017 - Infabode grew organically, with minimal spend on marketing.

November 2017 - 400 companies registered.

November 2017 - Infabode Launches iOS App.

January 2018- 420 content partners reached, and this includes most of the largest real estate agents, banks, and investors.

February 2018 - Or February 2018- the business has recorded £30,000 in revenue so far in its 4th quarter.

Monetisation strategy

Infabode is building a platform for the industry, so like other platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) the main focus in the early years has been growing the importance of the service.

The company produces revenue from integrations (allowing other companies to have access to the Infabode data and functionality) and highly targeted advertising products (which allows companies to get directly to their target market).

Two other products will start producing the platform revenue in 2018/19 with paid analytics, so that companies can track the reach of their content and premium users, allowing increased functionality to members (i.e. search filters, events calendar and messaging).

Use of proceeds

Infabode expects the breakdown of costs for its global expansion to be as follows:.

78%- staffing costs
12%- marketing and events
6%- server and tech costs
4%- other.

There's an immediate need to expand the Infabode team to keep on top of the increasing number of partners and integration deals. Two senior tech hires are needed and a commercial director. These three hires will take the Infabode team to ten people who will form the base of the company's growth, along with the support of the experienced board and industry investors.