ALT DRX, a Bengaluru-based startup, has raised $3.6 million in funding to launch the world’s first digital real estate marketplace. The platform allows Indians to invest in dematerialised real estate, with the ability to buy as little as 1 square foot at a time. The company aims to solve the problem of illiquidity in mid-sized real estate assets and potentially open the gates for capital to move into socially relevant, rent-yielding real estate assets such as rental housing, hostels, care homes, holiday homes, schools, industrial warehousing, high-street retail, hotels and managed offices.
ALT DRX enables owners of these real estate assets to dematerialise their ownership into tokenised tradeable digital assets. For example, a 50,000 square foot building can be tokenised into 50,000 tradeable digital assets, each holding the economic value proportionate to 1 square foot of the property. These tradeable digital assets can be bought, held, traded at real-time prices and settled instantaneously between pre-qualified, KYC compliant registered users. The platform uses a permissioned centralised blockchain-based ledger protocol that restricts the transfer of these digital assets to foreigners while attempting to build user credibility by using Zero Trust Architecture.
The startup has seen investor participation from one of India’s top law firms, renowned family offices, successful startup founders, and unnamed senior professionals from Development Bank of Singapore, Ernst & Young, HSBC, Volvo, Salesforce among others. The platform has also set up a unique Development Management Company for building income-generating alternate real estate assets in partnership with the Kolte Patil Family Office.
The company aims to democratise real estate ownership by dematerialising it, empowering everyone to co-own high-quality residential and commercial real estate that are managed by professionals.