Spleet, a Nigerian prop-tech startup , has raised US$625,000 in pre-seed funding to help it launch a new product that gives tenants with low-interest loans to help them pay their rent.
Spleet, founded by Tola Adesanmi in 2018 in response to a need in Lagos for flexible rental payment alternatives rather than the customary one- or two-year upfront payment options, allowing homeowners to rent to vetted persons while simultaneously assisting people in finding places to stay. Landlords can use the service to check and evaluate tenants, as well as automate rent collection.
Spleet has secured US$625,000 in an oversubscribed pre-seed round led by MetaProp VC, with Future Africa, FEDHA Capital, VFD Group, Moonshot VC, HoaQ, Squarefoot CEO Jonathan Wassersturm, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, and others also participating.
Spleet will utilize the funds to develop its newest rent financing product, “Rent Now Pay Later,” as well as other products that will make residential leasing procedures more simple. The new product will provide tenants with low-interest loans to help them pay their rent.
“After launching a marketplace in 2019, we realised that the issues in our rental market were beyond what our marketplace could solve. Affordability is one of the biggest pain points for tenants. Most tenants earn income monthly and can therefore not afford the 1-2 years burden of paying their rent in advance,” said Adesanmi.
“We decided to change this by building a financing solution, “Rent Now, Pay Later”, to help tenants get homes with as little as 1-2 months rent worth of savings. We are currently in beta testing our rent now, pay later product with a select number of tenants and we are happy with the results so far. We will extend this to a wider market of tenants and potential tenants in the coming months.”
Zachary Evans, co-founder and general partner at MetaProp, said Spleet had distinguished itself as a best in class product within the “nascent and exploding” prop-tech sector in Nigeria.
“It remains extraordinarily difficult to rent apartments efficiently and we believe Spleet will create a massive business by removing this friction. We are very excited about our investment in Spleet and our broader entrance into the West African proptech market,” he said.