Here's all you need to know about a Singapore startup backed by Facebook co-founder

It now has $2.5million total funding.

99.co, a Sinapore property site, just recently made headlines in the startup scene after anouncing that it has received an investment from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and leading venture capital firm Sequioa Capital, bringing its total investment to $2.5 million. It last raised a round in May 2015, getting US560,000 from Fenox Venture Capital, 500 Startups, Golden Gate Ventures, Kathrein Ventures, and East Ventures.

To satisfy our curiosity on what makes this startup attractive to big investors as mentioned above, Singapore Business Review spoke with its Founder and Chief Executive Officer Darius Cheung.

Here's what we found out:

99.co was founded in January 2014 by technology veterans Darius Cheung, Dominic Ee, Conor McLaughlin and Anuj Bheda. They had been on the consumer side of trying to buy property and rent in Singapore. Frustrated and surprised by how complex the process was in such an advanced country and how difficult it was to find accurate transparent data and information to make such an important decision, the founders decided to set out to solve the problem.

99.co aims to provide full and transparent information to the consumer to help them make better renting or buying decisions, as well as enabling agents to offer a better service to consumers through their tools. For agents, 99.co delivers highly qualified leads and arms them with online and mobile tools to make their work more efficient.

99.co’s core strategic goal of empowering consumers to “Find A Home They’ll Love” is also 99.co’s central brand positioning. Understanding that finding a home is more than just seeking a residential unit to live in and is one of the most important and personal decisions in someone's life, the central vision is to empower the consumer with information and tools to help them make the best home renting or buying decision for them, and at the same time making agents more efficient by ensuring the enquiries are more qualified and targeted, and empowering them with mobile tools so they can help customers anytime anywhere. They believe they can revolutionise the industry to the new mobile age, bring up the quality and reliability of service.

99.co empowers consumers by enabling powerful search through its native search algorithm ListRank which was launched in November 2014. ListRank collates more than 30 data points, assessing the quality and fullness of information of listings, to present back the highest quality matches for the searcher. This operating model, where no agent can pay their way to the top of the search results but in fact enables the best information to be surfaced first, ensures real estate agents provide the best possible information to the consumer. ListRank, available only on 99.co, attempts to effectively elevate industry standards in filtering the best, most accurate search results.

99.co is also accessible on web and via iOs and Android apps, incorporating live chat functionality to ensure rapid response from agents. Round-the-clock help and assistance is readily available via 99.co’s happiness team.

In January 2015, 99.co successfully raised Series A funding of SGD2 million and was touted by Singapore Business Review as one of the Hottest Startups In Singapore of 2015. As of May 2015, Darius also serves as an angel investor in multiple startups and is Venture Partner at Golden Gate Ventures, Entrepreneur-In-Residence at INSEAD, as well as on the Board of Directors of Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE). Darius has won a slate of accolades including BusinessWeek’s Best Young Entrepreneurs in Asia in 2008, Singapore Youth Award in 2010 and Singapore Computer Society’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015.

Who is Darius?

Darius is a Singaporean serial entrepreneur and angel investor. Darius is an alumnus of the National University of Singapore – a graduate of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering with a minor in Technopreneurship and participant in the NUS Overseas College programme. Darius founded mobile security startup TenCube which utilises its native technology to allow mobile phone users to protect their data including lost or stolen devices.

TenCube was awarded Grand Champion of Startup@Singapore and received seed funding from the National University of Singapore. In 2010, TenCube was acquired by McAfee for SGD25 million.

In January 2013, Darius founded Billpin, a bill-sharing mobile app which provided the impetus to leap into the home rental space. In October 2013, Darius launched Homie.com – a digital platform for finding flatmates. Realising the need for a much more comprehensive search engine for all things property including rental and purchase of government and private residences, Darius launched 99.co in January 2014.