Keyper: proptech in the UAE

This interview was conducted and transcribed by Timothy Motte.

Biography

Walid Shihabi is the co-founder of Keyper, a Dubai-based proptech startup. Keyper digitizes property management for landlords and eases payments for tenants, offering a rent-now-pay-later (RNPL) solution. Keyper has raised over $30M, through a mix of equity and sukuk financing. 

Before Keyper, Walid ran a real estate fund.

How did your real estate experience culminate into founding Keyper?

I’m an Airbnb admirer. It’s the most successful proptech in history. Airbnb opened a new universe of inventory for travelers, who were previously limited to a city’s hotel supply. They shifted the paradigm for property owners as well, who gained a new way to extract value from their assets. 

I raised a small $15M real estate fund on that thesis. We acquired, operated and rented vacation properties in Dubai. This taught me the tricks of the trade: dealing with agencies, property management software, data providers… It also opened my eyes to the industry’s shortcomings: a plethora of inefficient, archaic processes waiting to be improved. Access to funding for landlords was another challenge I noticed. 

Operating that fund for 8 years was a great school. I realized that no one was solving the problems I encountered. So I decided to solve them myself.

Which low-hanging fruit did you tackle first, with Keyper?

Prior to my real estate days, I was an equity markets researcher. I’m used to having access to vast amounts of structured, useful, quality data allowing me to accurately value companies. My experience in real estate made me realize that landlords and prospective buyers didn’t have access to that information. 

Our first product was an automated valuation model (AVM), an algorithm that uses comparable sales, property characteristics and price trends to precisely estimate the value of a property. Without an AVM, property owners don’t know how much value they’re losing out on. 

Keyper has grown since then. What is the star feature today?

Now, we’re focused on fixing Dubai’s rental space. 

The process for renting a place here is broken. It’s the same in other emerging markets. A lot of that brokenness is related to how rent payments work. They are antiquated and restrictive.