Co-living tech start up The Assembly Place currently has over 300 rooms in Singapore, with another 200 rooms in the pipeline. Source: The Assembly Place
Co-living tech start-up The Assembly Place (TAP) has raised $5.55 million in a seed funding round, led by Oxley Holdings Deputy CEO Eric Low See Ching.
Aside from Dr Tan Tee Khoon, Country Manager – Singapore, PropertyGuru, other angel investors for this round include M+S CEO Kemmy Tan, PropNex Singapore CEO Mohamed Ismail, Knight Frank Singapore Group MD Wendy Tang, Cushman & Wakefield Executive Director (Capital Markets) Shaun Poh, Lyte Ventures Executive Chairman Dennis Goh, as well as SRI Ltd Managing Partners Bruce Lye and Ken Low.
The fundraising exercise – which was the company’s first since its founding in 2019 – will allow TAP to accelerate its growth and further develop its technology platform.
“We are humbled and grateful for the trust and support of our investors who participated in this first round of fundraising. This is a strong testament of TAP and our growth strategy moving ahead,” said TAP Founder and CEO Eugene Lim.
Starting from six rooms in 2019, TAP currently has over 300 rooms across Singapore and another 200 rooms in the pipeline. Of these, 95% are under management contract instead of the usual straight lease model.
Currently, the company manages over $250 million of assets under management, making it an asset-light co-living operator.
In August, TAP announced that it had secured four more buildings under management contract (5+5 years).
With these four assets, the company will have “close to 550 rooms spread out across 16 purpose-built co-living assets and is on track to have 1000 rooms by Q2 2022”, said TAP in a release on Tuesday (9 November).
TAP shared that it is also exploring management contract for commercial buildings which Lim believes would enable TAP to “explore new ways to manage ageing commercial buildings be it a co-working or co-sharing model to increase yield back to these asset owners”.
“Buoyed by this funding round and the support of its strategic partners, TAP will focus on improving its current mobile app platform to add value and convenience to its members. There will also be strategic hires to bring the company to the next level of growth,” said TAP.
Notably, TAP has hired Zam Ong as its Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Prior to joining TAP, Ong was the Head of Enterprise Architecture at Dubai’s Department of Culture and Tourism. He was also the former CTO of Lunch Actually Platform for 12 years.
“We are extremely [thrilled] to have Zam Ong who has more than 20 years experience in information system technology joining us in our start up journey,” said Lim. “We believe that with Ong’s expertise in the tech world, he can further improve TAP technology platform to match suitable tenants to co-live together through their lifestyle, occupation, and preference.”
TAP has also launched the first phase of its mobile app, which has significantly reduced data entry and digitalised all documentation such as e-stamp documents and tenancy agreements.
With the fundraising round, TAP will form its board of advisers, with Low See Ching as Chairman.
Joining him on the board of advisors are TAP Founder and CEO Eugene Lim, Kemmy Tan of M+S, Wendy Tang of Knight Frank Singapore, Dennis Goh of Lyte Ventures, Dr Tan Tee Khoon of PropertyGuru Singapore and Sean Tan, Group Legal advisor for Technovator International Limited and Director of True Group.
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Cheryl Chiew, Digital Content Specialist at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact her about this story, email: cheryl@propertyguru.com.sg.
