A European PropTech View, with Xavier Ardanuy, Okify

Welcome back to ‘A European PropTech View, by Dilan Omari-Clark’ our Q&A focused on European PropTech’s.

This week we speak to Xavier Ardanuy, co-founder and CEO of Okify.

Okify is a proptech startup that makes moving house a smooth and hassle-free experience. Okify uses technology to help their customers in every step of the way so they can focus on the important things while they take care of the rest. For the first time a single platform can manage all the services you need during one of the most stressful moments of your life. The company was founded in 2020 and is based in Barcelona, Spain.

At what point did you realise there was a gap in the market and that you had the product for it?

We realized there was an opportunity while doing what every entrepreneur needs to constantly do, talk with customers. At first, we wanted to digitalize and improve the experience of renting a property. After further market analysis we quickly detected that many customers reacted positively when offered support to switch energy providers, set up internet service, etc. once they had already found a new home.

We realized that moving house was still a very stressful and messy process with big room for improvement and we decided to focus 100% on that.

Okify was founded in 2020 during the pandemic, how has the last year impacted your business? 

It is hard to say because we have not operated in a period without the pandemic. People have continued moving, so the market has been active. However, it is true that the number of international movers has decreased. We expect to start helping more and more foreigners as we go back to normal life.

What we did realize is that many real estate agents were very open to listen to new digital solutions like ours that can highly improve their efficiency while giving a better service to their customers.

How is your business evolving and how’s that differentiated from the competition?

We are continuously improving our platform adding more and more features to help our customers enjoy a smooth moving process. Our vision is to be the first platform that helps you move house anywhere in the world with only one click.

The excellent level of service we are giving and the technology we are adding at every step of the way is what is making us different from any other competitor. We believe we are on the right track to make this a global solution for movers.

What is a frequently asked question you get about your product?

The most common question is: how much does it cost? Followed by: How can it be for free? And this is part of the magic of our process. We help you select the best services you need to move house, free of charge. That means you just pay for the services themselves, no extra fee, and you always get the same price you would find on your own, sometimes even lower.

Are there any recent successes for Okify that you want to mention?

I do believe our biggest success is having built such an amazing team that is passionate about making our vision come true and use our technology to give the best service to our customers.

Numbers and deals are important but at the end of the day, a company is just a group of people working together towards a common goal. And our team is what we are most proud of.