German proptech Thing-it collects €4.2 million to expand its operating system for smart buildings

Thing-it, the German proptech building a digitalisation platform for smart buildings, has raised  €4.2 million in growth capital, co-led by PropTech1 Ventures and coparion. The startup wants to provide tools for efficient control and collaboration when it comes to property management in the IOT age. Office buildings around the world already contain 1.3 billion connected devices, which is projected to 3.3 billion by 2022. These devices and modern sensors offer a ton of information and control over smart offices, co-working spaces, intelligent city quarters, and general facility management.

Modern sensors can, for example, be used to cost-effectively determine room occupancy and optimize building use. Conditions of the room can be controlled remotely, such as shading, lighting, adaptive heating and cooling, even improved air circulation with savings of up to 30%.

But to wield that control, there needs to be a central operating system. Based in Bad Homburg, Thing-it has developed a SaaS platform that serves as a “brain” for all the data and functions firing around an IOT-equipped office. Owners, tenants, employees, and facility managers can interact with each other, book rooms, and control access to certain areas. Thanks to a growing network of hardware-, integration-, and operating partners, Thing-it’s platform can be individualized to a customer's requirements. Projects so far include cube berlin and The Ship in Cologne. Founder and CEO Dr. Marc Gille-Sepehri said, "We have already shown in production what a wide range of functionality and value chains our digitalization platform can support in commercial real estate. The current financing round helps us to roll out this functionality to a broader market together with our partners.” Nikolas Samios of PropTech1 Ventures commented, "Buildings are becoming more and more connected. This entails various potentials, but at the same time often enormous complexity, which classic real estate developers and, for example, at a later stage also facility managers can barely handle in their operations. Only through smart middleware such as Thing-it can digital real estate be mastered beyond glamorous showcase projects in the mass market."