India: Blockchain-Based Startup RealX Offers Fractional Ownership of Real Estate

Blockchain-based real estate platform RealX launches in India.

Enabling Fractional Ownership of Real Estate

According to a report by The Economic Times published on September 10, RealX – a blockchain-based service that allows users to own real estate in fractions – has opened its platform to the Indian public.

Notably, RealX launched last year but had to shut its operations down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the uninitiated, RealX enables investors to invest digitally in high-yield return properties with a blockchain-based registry.

Commenting, Manish Kumar, Co-founder, and CEO of RealX, said:

“We were deeply impacted by the pandemic as we were in our early days of operations and the pandemic shut down everything. Real estate as a sector needed some time to stabilize before we could offer it again as an investment option to our investors. However, this gave us time to rethink the business model after we engaged with many developers.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by Roshan Lionel Dsilva, whose firm Tripvillas is offering a basked of holiday properties managed by RealX.

Dsilva said:

“We have created a unique offering for RealX customers by blending ownership of holiday properties with usage and yield. We look forward to soon also launching our international properties on the RealX platform that will provide dollar-denominated income for Indian investors.”

Dilip Mittal, Director, Mittal Brothers – a leading Pune-based real estate firm – said his company is entering the era of fractional ownership with his one-of-a-kind project dubbed ‘One Place’ in Pune to ensure the democratization of investments in high-value assets in small ticket sizes.

Neera Inamdar, co-founder, and COO of RealX had the following to say:

“We offer ‘direct deeded property co-ownership’ and it is in the best interest of investors to become direct co-owners of the property. During the pandemic, we got a lot of insights from our customers as well as developers. We realized that while developers were in distress, customers still did not have a way to participate in property market as an investor. We set out to cover this gap and in-turn create a win-win solution for both.”

In related news, BTCManager reported on April 8 that US-based Caruso properties had announced it would accept bitcoin (BTC) for rent on all its properties.