Artificial intelligence-based property management platform Askporter has won a further £1.5 million in funding from half a dozen venture capitalists. One of the backers, Woking-based Henley Investments, has used the announcement to claim that the property management sector is'inefficient and ripe for disruption'. Askporter, which still calls itself a start-up despite being three years old, is a proptech company that uses a digital platform including a'virtual assistant' app to help property management teams run buildings more efficiently. It claims to help "cut costs and reduce the time spent on tedious tasks, all the while providing first-class support to occupants". "Our success raising £1.5 million investment reflects wider changes sweeping the property industry," says AskPorter CEO Tom Shrive (pictured, left).

In late 2018, AskPorter was all over the news with the announcement that Google Assistant had made a significant investment into the company. They had set out to build an AI-powered property maintenance chatbot but, since the Google investment and with their tech and business development support, have been focusing on expanding it vertically and sideways to automate every part of property management, end to end. I sat down with AskPorter's CCO Curran McKay, who explained to me the dual goal of what the company is developing. On the one hand, they seek to automate repetitive tasks for agents. On the other, they want to help property managers manage more properties with less headcount.

The former executive director of LSL Property Services, David Newnes, is one of the key backers of a new property management platform powered by artificial intelligence. Former TV Dragon James Caan and PropTech guru Faisal Butt are amongst other investors in AskPorter, which has now secured investment of over £500,000. AskPorter is a platform with an AI digital assistant that serves as a personal assistant for property managers and as a concierge for customers and tenants. The digital assistant'Porter' proactively carries out planned duties, guides customers through enquiries and reporting issues, and delivers concierge services, only reverting to a human manager or approved service provider when necessary. "This new technology has useful, practical applications that will add to and significantly improve the service that managing agents are able to offer landlords and tenants - both in AST and block management" says Newnes.