Bilt Rewards, which works with among the nation’s largest multifamily homeowners and operators to create loyalty applications and a co-branded bank card for property renters, entered unicorn standing after securing $150 million in a progress spherical led by Left Lane Capital.
We beforehand lined Bilt a yr in the past when the company raised $60 million in progress funding on a $350 million valuation. Right now’s funding raises that to $1.5 billion and offers the corporate about $213 million in whole funding because the firm launched in June 2021 out of Kairos, the startup studio led by Bilt founder and CEO Ankur Jain.
The corporate’s loyalty program and fee platform was rolled out to greater than 2.5 million house models throughout the nation thus far, Jain advised TechCrunch. Customers can earn factors and enhance their credit score by merely paying lease every month. Bilt’s factors can be utilized in 12 loyalty applications, together with main airways, inns, journey, health courses, Amazon.com purchases, credit score towards lease or a future downpayment.
Bilt has already processed over $3.5 billion in annualized lease funds and over $1.6 billion in annualized card spend up to now. Each of these figures are ones which have grown considerably in simply the final 90 days, Jain stated. Additionally, there are greater than half 1,000,000 clients utilizing Bilt between the loyalty program and bank card.
Along with the brand new funding, Bilt additionally introduced a brand new program known as Bilt Properties, which helps renters entry homeownership. Right here’s the way it works: Utilizing the member’s month-to-month lease fee, Bilt will present the member properties they will personal of their space for that very same fee. That fee consists of real-time rates of interest, taxes, revenue, credit score profile and different private knowledge to find out mortgage qualification, Jain stated.
Members may also calculate how an enchancment in credit standing will have an effect on the mortgage rate of interest they might qualify for, and may they want or need it, enroll in Bilt’s free lease reporting to assist enhance their credit score historical past with each on-time lease fee.
“It’s a possibility for extra renters to consider whether or not homeownership is the precise factor for them at this second in time,” Jain stated. “It’s simply so stupidly complicated to purchase a house right now, so we created the primary instrument the place now you can simply say, for $3,000 a month, what are the properties that I may purchase right now for a similar quantity?”
Becoming a member of Left Lane within the funding was Wells Fargo, Greystar, Invitation Properties, Camber Creek, Fifth Wall, Smash Capital, Prosus Ventures and Kairos. Earlier rounds have been extra strategic in nature, whereas this spherical was the primary time Bilt had taken progress institutional capital, Jain stated.
He notes that the corporate wasn’t formally on the lookout for new capital. In actual fact, it had hit profitability earlier this yr. Nevertheless, there was a number of inbound curiosity within the firm, and bringing on institutional traders like Left Lane Capital positioned Bilt to suppose extra long-term, together with a potential preliminary public providing or different future alternatives, for instance, acquisitions.
Additionally, having companions like Wells Fargo double down on this spherical “was a testomony to the power of the partnership,” as was attracting one of many largest multifamily homeowners, Greystar, and Invitation Properties, one of many largest single-family rental gamers, Jain added.
A lot of the brand new capital might be saved in reserves for now whereas the corporate is concentrated on aligning pursuits additional with its core business companions.
“Not like a number of the VC rat race companies the place you’re simply chasing progress for the sake of chasing progress, we are able to simply maintain specializing in the core enterprise and progress and suppose long-term right here,” Jain stated. “That’s our purpose and a giant motive why we raised the capital proper now.”
