Rental Heroes wins in 2022 Proptech Awards

If you follow us on social media, you will have seen the photos from the sold-out gala event at Dockside Cockle Bay, Sydney. This is where Proptech Association Australia announced the winners of the Proptech Awards, on June 8, 2022. 

We’re excited to share that for Efficiency & Optimisation Rental Heroes won Most Innovative Start-Up!

Winning a proptech award in the Start-Up category is an incredible achievement, and a positive acknowledgement from the industry that we have a solution that works, is needed, and gets results. It was a proud day.

This result has been a culmination of three years of hard work, overcoming plenty of mistakes and listening to customer feedback. Customer satisfaction has and always will be the primary driver of our success, and it’s what enables us to continuously improve our property management software solution.

What are the Proptech Awards? 

The Proptech Awards are relatively new since the industry itself is still emerging. Proptech refers to the technology specifically designed to improve the way property management companies and real estate businesses manage their day-to-day systems. It aims to assist property specialists as well as landlords and tenants to:

• Buy

• Sell

• Rent

• Design

• Construct

• Monitor contracts

• Record communications

• Manage property

Proptech was originally categorised under the fintech sector, but it’s now emerging as its own industry as the market continues to grow.

The emergence of proptech as an industry to be taken seriously has enabled Proptech Association Australia to establish the national Proptech Awards. The aim is to encourage and celebrate innovators and business leaders who are shaking up real estate, property and construction existing ad hoc systems. 

There are currently three categories for the Proptech Awards:

• Start-Ups - Enterprises that have been delivering their products and services to the commercial or residential property sector for a maximum of three years.

• Scale-Ups - Companies that have been operating in the proptech sector for a minimum of three years but less than 10 years.

• Established Suppliers - Companies that have been continuously developing in the proptech or real estate technology sector for 10 years or more.

‍Each category features seven awards, and the categorisation ensures that eligible applicants (and finalists) are judged on the same merits in terms of business resources and product maturity. The ceremony also has a “best of the best” award, where the seven trophy winners within each category run for Proptech Of The Year. 

This was the second annual Proptech event and already, strength and competition are growing. The Proptech Awards in 2022 had a 31% increase in entries compared to the previous year, with new awards added as well. 

It’s a great demonstration of the rapid and continuous growth the industry is seeing, as well as a tribute to how much the Australian proptech sector has to offer.

The Most Innovative Proptech award winners  

Now that the awards are completed, Rental Heroes is proud to be the official recipient of the Efficiency and Optimisation Award in the Start-Up category for 2022. 

The efficiency and optimisation award focuses on proptechs that support back-end operations, process and efficiency improvements and deliver optimisation in real estate, property or construction businesses.

This aligns perfectly with the nature of our property management software solution, which uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to assist property managers in handling tenant issues and inquiries as well as maintenance concerns.   

Receiving industry-wide recognition for our product was incredibly rewarding for everyone in the Rental Heroes team, especially since each member helped out and got involved in completing the entry application, which was no easy feat!

The application process

The online application made us more nervous than the awards did. We could sit back and just enjoy the gala evening, but getting there was a journey in itself.

Each criterion for the award category had a comprehensive set of questions focused on showcasing the value and benefits we provide, including an elevator pitch, the type of problems our AI solves, our innovation and why what we do is best for the industry.

While it was daunting to provide so much detail, we were lucky in that each team member stepped up and took ownership of filling out their section, which turned it into a fun process that we really enjoyed.

A big bonus for us was including real customer examples, demonstrating that our software is an innovative product that supports property management companies and encourages digital transformation in the industry. It’s so good for us to internalise the real-life changes we are making and hear that feedback from our clients.

Winner, winner! 

There were many credible proptech businesses nominated, so we didn’t really expect that we would win, but our team was still quietly hopeful, especially since they were actively involved in the application process.

It was really an emotional moment for us when we were announced as the winner of our award category. As the founders of Rental Heroes, Ben Burton and Dominik Chmielewski were full of pride in accepting the trophy. 

Achieving this milestone was indicative of our growth and success. The positive sentiment and feedback that has poured in from our customers as well as from the rest of the proptech industry just validates that Rental Heroes is headed in the right direction.

What the proptech award means for Rental Heroes 

Winning in the Proptech Awards 2022 has strengthened our credibility in the industry and it has definitely given us the confidence boost to elevate our offerings to the next level.

Our property management software has been a transformative tool that has helped property management teams deal with the current labour shortages, enabling them to adapt and remain competitive in the industry. Being recognised as a proptech business that provides an “industry best practice” gives us leverage as we start gearing up for the new fiscal year. 

From a product development perspective, our win at the Proptech Awards serves as a jumping point to start innovating our artificial intelligence software to battle other issues that property managers deal with on a daily basis.

By next year, we will qualify for the Scale-Up category in the Proptech awards, allowing us to compete with companies that have been operating in the industry for more than three years.

Winning awards can be validating, but as a business, getting results and customer satisfaction is still what matters most to our team. Hitting this milestone is just another chapter on the journey of our success, and our ambition extends to expanding our team as well. We hope to double the size of our team by this time next year. 

If you want to see how our AI solution can benefit you, book a time to learn how Alex works with property management teams.