acasa Joins UKAA as Winners: Most Likely to Change the World of Build To Rent 2018
Who are acasa
acasa’s purpose is to build foundational technology that runs the home, so the world can live better, together. Developing the future of home management, acasa allows you to seamlessly set-up, switch and purchase utilities and on demand services through a single app. acasa is the stress free way to run your home.
acasa has built partnerships with several challenger service providers including broadband company Origin Broadband and green energy provider Octopus Energy, with further partnerships to be announced in coming weeks. Through Octopus Energy, acasa have one of the most affordable and greenest energy options in the country with 100 percent renewable electricity.
acasa also allows you to track and split any shared household cost from rent to Netflix. With the app you can easily visualise who owes what, and check who should pay for the next thing. You are also able to send and receive money from the people you live with inside the app for free.
acasa Origin story:
Nick Katz worked in commercial real estate for 8 years as an investment broker, leasing agent, and sustainability & building operations in the United States and the United Kingdom. He’s spent the last 6 years working in the prop tech space. He’s done this both as an early employee and executive growing Honest Buildings, and the last 5 years building his own business, acasa. acasa is focused on consumer home management, payments and utilities. Nick was named as the youngest fellow at RICS. Nick’s obsession with property started at an early age as his father is an architect and his mother a landscape designer.
Sky high costs of living largely driven by household costs, student loan burdens and reduced job security is now the status quo for many young professionals. This has deeply impacted how they see their living situation. Welcome to Generation Rent, where household running costs are more than 50 percent plus of their average salary.
Yet when it comes to managing these running costs, it feels like our homes are still stuck in the dark ages. Dealing with home finances, maintenance, utilities and services is a hot mess of incomprehensible spreadsheets, unsettled payments, passive aggressive fridge messages and broken promises.
That’s why we started acasa
To create an unified, frictionless and deeply integrated platform that will bring the home into the digital age. To build the foundational technology for the home, so the world can live better, together. Ultimately, we will create the ability to log in and log out of any home, anywhere in the world with a single click.
We have 3 core features of the app: set up and automate payments for core household utilities including electricity, gas, broadband, tv license, water and council tax; track any household cost to stay on top of your home finances; pay anyone in your home directly through the app. This is built on top of a flexible billing and accounting platform which can scale to be used for any sort of household service that our tenants might want.
We want to continue to focus on helping renters and the utility companies, service providers, agents and landlords that serve them in the United Kingdom. There are 12 million renters in the UK. Now with Nationwide Building Society and a number of other top strategic and venture investors backing us, we’re ready to grow faster and solve more problems for these renters in 2019 than ever before.
Team bios:
Nick Katz, FRICS is the Co-founder and CEO of acasa. Nick has worked in the US and the UK for nearly a decade in real estate and has bought and sold commercial buildings, improved the energy efficiency of hotels, and deployed software to large property portfolios. In 2013 Nick joined the founding team of VC backed Honest Buildings as Head of Europe before launching acasa. Nick loves the idea of leveraging technology to help people live better at home. Hes an expert at dealing with home and relationship issues having rented and shared 17 homes in 4 countries US, Israel, Germany, UK living with over 50 people in the process.
Nick’s role at acasa is all about making sure the business well financed, keeping the team happy, and driving the vision forward. It extends more specifically into fundraising; investor management; team and culture building; HR, financial management; growth marketing; business development; supplier relationship management; revenue growth, and commercial contract negotiation.
Vasanth Subramanian is Co-founder and CTO. Vasanth leads the technical development and brings deep development experience from delivering software solutions and improving user experiences for two FTSE 250 technology firms. He loves the intersection of data, property and people and solving real world problems with tech. He has a mission to build technology to make house-sharing less stressful and more delightful. Vasanth has skills in engineering; product management; user experience (UX) design; user interface (UI) design; user research; data analysis; analytics; API development; integrations; data regulation compliance.
Saumeel Pachigar (“Pach”) is Head of Integrations and Partnerships. Pach is responsible for and leads the commercial efforts at acasa. Pach was previously CCO and founder of PropTech start-up Dividabill an early stage utility bill splitting business before joining the journey at acasa. Pach brings his knowledge of the utility industry to acasa and leads on integrations with our service and on demand companies. Pach also focuses his time with business development; supplier management; commercial contract negotiation; commercial strategy.
Award Winners
UKAA Build To Rent World Changer (October 2018)
Residential Trailblazer (September 2018)
Global Proptech Competition – Finalist (March 2018)
Greatest Social Impact – Residential – Winner (February 2018)
Proptech Competition New York City – Winner (2017)
Proptech Company of the Year (2017)
MIPIM Global Proptech Competition – Finalist
Property Week – Trailblazers Award