QuintoAndar is taking its first steps outside Brazil to open a tech hub in Lisbon, Portugal, aimed at attracting tech talent across the pond.
Co-founder and CEO Gabriel Braga made the announcement during the 2021 Web Summit taking place this week in Lisbon. The new office will be the first in Europe and will be operational in March, initially employing up to 50 people by the end of next year.
The company markets itself as “the largest housing platform in Latin America”, providing sales and rental assistance, and also assumes the risk associated with monthly rent payments. QuintoAndar currently had over 150,000 properties and $ 89 billion in assets under management and operates in more than 40 cities across Brazil.
The move comes six months after the company raised $ 300 million in Series E financing that valued the company at $ 4 billion. In August, investors Tencent and Greenoaks added an additional $ 120 million to bring the valuation to $ 5.1 billion and more than $ 700 million raised in total, Braga said.
He noted that the European region is home to a lot of tech talent and the tech hub was something that had been in the works for some time but was postponed due to the global pandemic. Now that the company has adopted a hybrid working model, it is ready to take the plunge to expand internationally.
In addition to its presence in Portugal, QuintoAndar is also preparing to make a similar move to Mexico next year, Brag said.
“The new office is part of our long-term goal of building a world-class technical team and a portion of the funding will support this continued investment,” he added. “We’re based in Brazil, but more and more we’re bringing people from all over the world to join us. Remote working has made things easier in some ways and difficult in others, but now we have more people spread out. “
