Matera raises $11.2 million to let you handle residential property management yourself

Matera, the French startup formerly known as illiCopro, is raising an $11.2 million funding round (a10 million). The company has been building a SaaS platform to give you all the tools you need to handle property management for your residential building.

Index Ventures is leading the round, with existing investor Samaipata also participating. Business angels, such as Bertrand Jelensperger, Paulin Dementhon and Marc-David Choukroun are also participating.

In France, there are two ways to handle property management of residential buildings. Co-owners of the hallways, elevator and common space of the building can either hire a company to do it and handle all the pesky tasks, or you can do it yourself.

Matera wants to target the second category - co-owners who want to manage their building themselves. Other startups, such as Bellman, have chosen a different approach. Matera has built a web-based platform to view information, communicate with other co-owners and make sure everything is up-to-date.

Everybody has their own account and can access the platform. Co-owners meet regularly to handle outstanding issues. Matera centralizes all topics, helps you write a report and checks that it complies with legal requirements.

Matera then handles everything that involves money. You can collect money from co-owners every month and check how your money is spent. The platform tries to do the heavy lifting when it comes to accounting.

Finally, Matera helps you manage contracts with partners - elevator maintenance, heating maintenance, cleaning company, water, electricity, insurance, taking care of the garden, etc. You get an address book for your partners, and the company is working on a way to help you switch to another partner from the platform.

If there's something you don't feel comfortable doing yourself, Matera can help you work with legal, accounting, insurance and construction experts.

So far, Matera has managed to attract 1,000 residential buildings representing 25,000 users. The company plans to expand to other European countries in the future, starting with Belgium, Spain, Italy and Germany. With today's funding round, the company plans to hire 100 persons.