French PropTech Casap Raises €2.2 Million and Plans to Launch a New Portal

Parisian PropTech startup Casap (formerly Scoppe) has announced that it has raised €2.2 million in seed funding and that it plans to build a new property portal for the French market.

Casap is an online appointment booking tool for real estate professionals that deals with after-hours requests from home hunters. Connecting to both the portals and the agents internal software, Casap sends an SMS to users who are interested in an agent's listing to qualify them as leads and arrange a viewing time to save agents time and needless communication.

The funding comes from local VC firm Frst Capital along with several angel investors including Steve Abou Rjeily, co-founder of French healthcare booking service Doctolib.

Founded as Scoppe by ex-real estate agent and Doctolib employee Théo Magda along with co-founders Raphaëlle Moustial and Maxime Lebastard in January 2021, the startup has grown quickly to a staff of over 25 and has facilitated over 50,000 appointments for more than 200 clients. 

Casap's ambition doesn't stop at expanding its booking platform. Aside from using the capital raised to employ 20 new recruits, the company is also looking to build a new property portal to take on the likes of SeLoger and LeBonCoin according to CEO Théo Magda:

“ The current real estate portals see themselves as media: their need to monetize their traffic takes precedence over the needs of real estate professionals. On the private side, finding a property transparently and booking a visit is an obstacle course: no one takes pleasure in it and we are increasingly wary of scams. We want to create a portal where professionals can finally offer their customers a reassuring, thoughtful experience, where everyone saves time and has peace of mind.”  

Bridging the communication gap around agent availability and consumer expectations of instant online booking is an area that some portal companies are increasingly interested in. In the UK Rightmove has been experimenting with booking software in its rentals listings for some time while in the United States the issue is being keenly felt as Zillow and CoStar vie for control of bookings.