Toronto-based Moregidge, developers of an online platform that seeks to ease the home-buying process for brokers, realtors, and clients, closed its first pre-seed round at just over $500,000.
The money will go towards expanding the company’s engineering team in order to continue refining its platform. Lead investors for the round were Maple Leaf Angels 48 and Good News Ventures, along with funding from pre-seed focused US investor Hustle Fund.
Moregidge, which was founded in 2018, is a digital financial services platform aimed towards helping brokers and agents connect with realtors and clients in one centralized location, hoping to use technology to make the mortgage process easier.
Muhammad Rashid, CEO and co-founder of Moregidge, told BetaKit that he doesn’t see anything else in the market that serves as an all-in-one tool for brokers to facilitate transactions.
“The average broker probably uses five to seven different systems right now,” Rashid said. “That includes software like Salesforce, Pipedrive, Dropbox…and what we’ve done is taken the core features of those different platforms, and rebuilt it into one cohesive experience.”
Rashid said a broker’s time shouldn’t be spent on administrative tasks, but should be geared towards building their business and cultivating relationships with their clients.
“Behind the scenes there’s this huge monumental shift of consumers wanting to use more technology but brokers don’t necessarily facilitate that,” he said. “They’re still accepting applications on paper. For us, the brokers who don’t know where to start in converting to digital, we’re that turnkey operation to be able to do that for them.”
Currently, there are around 200 brokers using Moregidge, most of which are in Ontario and BC. Each broker is charged a subscription fee of $99 per month to use the platform. Moregidge is partnered with Finastra, which helps in connecting brokers to its platform.
In terms of expansion, Moregidge is looking to grow into the US, as well as the UK and Australia due to their similar banking structure. Rashid said international expansion is set to be targeted at the beginning of 2020.
Rashid said the next step for Moregidge is integrating realtors onto the platform by the end of this year. The long-term goal for the company is to own the entire home-buying pipeline and build a comprehensive platform that includes brokers, realtors, lawyers, and clients.
“The grander vision is streamlining the whole home-buying experience,” Rashid said. “If we can cut that down [and] make it easier for everybody that’s our eventual goal and where we see the company going.”
Featured image via Unsplash.
