The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has impacted many industries including aviation, hospitality and much more. Despite the hardship, a Danish proptech startup LifeX, which already operates in six European cities secured fresh funding to expand its presence. This makes its co-living model successful during extremely tough times.
Secures €6M funding
LifeX has secured €6M funding from a Copenhagen-based startup studio, Founders alongside Berlin-based VC fund, Cherry Ventures. Previously, LifeX announced a seed funding round of €7.5M from the same investors along with participation from a few others. With the current funding round, LifeX has now received nearly €15M funding on the whole and is gearing up to raise a Series A round in the near future.
LifeX: A sneak peak!
The fresh investment will.be used to strengthen the presence of LifeX in both the existing and new markets, fuel product development, and accelerate its vision to make anyone feel at home across the world.
Founded in 2017 by Sune Theodorsen and Ritu Jain, LifeX claims to help young professionals overcome the many challenges of finding housing and growing a social network. The company offers a family-style approach to co-living, featuring shared living spaces filled with designer furniture. It also removes common points of conflict such as chores, house maintenance and bills.
LifeX also claims to help young professionals grow their social networks through community fostering initiatives such as events, networking opportunities and more with its embedded members from over 50 different countries.
According to the company, the monthly rent depends on the city, the apartment and the room size. Deposits vary from city-to-city in the range of €1 – €1.5k. The startup asks its customers to prepay the last month’s rent when they join LifeX. This means that as soon as they give their one-month move out notice, LifeX knows what your last month will be and this month will already be paid for.
According to the company, its prices are all-inclusive and includes, rent, utilities, Wi-Fi and Netflix membership, cleaning service (twice a week) for both the shared space and private room, shared supplies (household items that are generally shared among housemates like toilet paper, laundry detergent, salt, pepper, cooking oil etc.)
Success amidst COVID-19 crisis
While the hospitality industry is extremely hit by the COVID-19 crisis, LifeX claims to have continued to find success and has earned the attention of investors. “We have been focusing on our community of members, which is the essence of LifeX. It was really important for us to remain approachable and reactive during these unprecedented times. We were due to release a new feature in our LifeX app, which aimed to enhance communication with our members. We identified the need to accelerate development of this feature and released it during the lockdown period, allowing us to maintain a closer line of communication with our members,” says Theodorsen, who is the CEO of LifeX.
According to the company, it has also been focusing on fighting loneliness brought about by the pandemic-driven lockdown and isolation. “What we noticed during the crisis was that our members were very appreciative of not having to face this alone. They enjoyed spending time together, bonding and having their housemates as a support system to rely on,” says Theodorsen.
Currently, LifeX operates co-living homes in Copenhagen, Berlin, London, Paris, Munich and Vienna. There are 30 employees with offices in these cities mentioned here.
Main image picture credits: LifeX
