M7 leads $2.3m investment in commercial real estate startup Jasper

Jasper allows investors to purchase fractional ownership in high-quality commercial properties using a fully-digitised onboarding, accreditation and subscription process. It also plans on providing a secondary market, allowing investors the potential to sell their equity to other investors, giving unprecedented liquidity in a traditionally illiquid asset class.

Jasper co-founder and CEO, Mark Hurley, said commercial real estate was an extremely desirable asset for growing long-term generational wealth, yet most investors lack efficient access to this asset class.

“Our technology-led approach provides efficiency to all parts of the sourcing, syndication and capital raising process, allowing us to offer this asset class to a large number of investors, with lower minimums, lower fees and improved liquidity compared to analogue incumbents.”

The startup was founded by Hurley, Mark Campbell and Oliver Shaw. Hurley is a serial tech entrepreneur and previous EY Entrepreneur of the year finalist, who sold previous company, Little Giant, to Dentsu Aegis Media in 2017.  Campbell is a seasoned commercial real estate executive with experience in Australasian and European markets, who has recently been leading a $12 bn (NZD) joint venture between a leading US Private Equity firm and M7.

Jasper is launching in New Zealand and Australia this year, with expansion planned for Asia-Pacific, Europe and the US within the next three years.

The company’s most recent fundraising round is a SAFE note led by M7 Real Estate, bringing the total seed stage funding to NZD $2.3 million. Icehouse Ventures, James Property Group and RCP also participated in the round.

Campbell commented, “M7 is an established European business and their support shows that those at the forefront of the industry see a changing property investment environment led by technology.”

Richard Croft, CEO at M7 Real Estate added, “As an investor and asset manager we recognise the value of Jasper’s technology-led marketplace and the potential impact it will have on the commercial property sector.

“We’ve seen strong global demand for attractive yields and believe the Jasper platform will provide a significant new opportunity for these investors going forward. We love what the team at Jasper are building and are excited to be joining them on this journey.”

The company says the funds raised are being used to increase their engineering capacity, grow out their acquisitions team and accelerate their licensing applications in multiple territories prior to launch.