Urban analytics startup Neighbourlytics raises $1.3 million in pre-Series A

Melbourne urbantech analytics platform Neighbourlytics has raised $1.3 million in a pre-Series A.

The round was led by Californian VC ALIAVIA Ventures, which backs female founders in enterprise and consumer tech companies, supported by LaunchVic’s angel sidecar fund, the Alice Anderson Fund.

The fresh capital brings the total raised by Neighbourlytics to $3.5 million with existing investors including Trawalla Group, Myer Foundation, Scale Investors and  Portable following on their investments.  

The capital is earmarked for new hires in product development, and sales and marketing, as well as enhanced automation processes and advanced analytics models including a deeper evolution of  metrics that capture social sustainability. The company was founded in 2018 by Lucinda Hartley and currently has 22 staff in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. 

Neighbourlytics unpacks how people use the built environment to help developers understand property data and make forecasts. The platform offers unique social and behavioural insights, along with benchmarking data to improve the return on investment (ROI) on developments, and capital projects.

Co-CEO Jessica Christiansen-Frank said the Neighbourlytics data helps develops get the tenancy mix right to create more liveable neighbourhoods with up to 300% higher visitation. The platform’s simple analytics  accelerate project research up to 10x faster than traditional methods.  

“Life has changed  a lot in the last couple of years and, as a result, there’s currently demand for lifestyle and  behavioural data like never before,” she said.

“It’s no longer valid to look back at five year old census data, or rely on gut feeling, to understand what people want in an office building or shopping mall or how they look after their health and wellbeing. Behavioural big data is the missing piece of the  intelligence puzzle for our customers.” 

And they’re getting it, with the number of Tier 1 property developers using the platform in Australia doubling to 80% in 2022.  The platform’s insights have been used by more 100 leading property developers in 12 countries.  

The FIFA World Cup in Qatar has used Neighbourlytics to plan the legacy around of the stadiums and precincts built to host the event.

Neighbourlytics goes beyond traditional data sets to tap into the daily digital footprints of people via anonymised mobile phone location data, public social media, ratings and reviews, and crowd-sourced map data.  

Co-CEO Lucinda Hartley said that over the past four years the data analytics have been leveraged to inform more $4.86 billion in asset management decisions.

“This  shows a growing maturity of the industry to prioritise leaving a legacy of great people places, not just buildings,” she said.

“This capital raise is a launchpad as we lay the foundations for global expansion. It’s recognition of  the maturing of Neighbourlytics as a business and the evolution of the real estate industry as a  whole. We’re excited to partner with a team of extraordinary investors as we continue to help our  clients make better decisions that improve return on investment and community outcomes.”

ALIAVIA Ventures cofounder and general partner Marisa Warren said they are “super excited” to lead the investment in Neighbourlytics to help accelerate global growth.

“We believe  Neighbourlytics offers a new paradigm for the real estate and asset management industry by  taking a real-time data-driven approach to property development and sustainability,” she said.

LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick said: “LaunchVic are thrilled to join ALIAVIA Ventures,  Trawalla Group, Myer Foundation, Scale Investors and Portable in backing Neighbourlytics in their  ext phase of growth. We share a mission to elevate women-led startups and ensure incredible  founders like Jessica and Lucinda can access the capital they need to grow and create jobs.”