Over the past few weeks we have been showcasing the winners of our Elevator Pitch LIVE 2016 competition.
This week, we’re shining the light on our PropTech Startup of the Year: Trussle.
Over 200 companies applied for the competition, a number that was then whittled down to 25 finalists across the following categories: Cybersecurity, FinTech, HealthTech, PropTech and AdTech/MarTech.
On a live pitching day, a panel of five judges cast their votes to decide on one winner in each category.
Watch the short video to find our more about Trussle, where the idea come from, what traction it has gained to date and what it has planned for the future.
Interviewee: Ishaan Malhi, CEO at Trussle
Can you tell us a bit about Trussle?
Trussle is the UK’s first online mortgage broker, so we help homeowners and first-time buyers save time and money on securing a mortgage online, and once you’ve secured the mortgage, we’ll continue to monitor it daily, notifying you when there’s a better deal available so that you never pay more than you should. In short, we help you own your home with confidence.
Where did that idea come from?
Trussle was an idea born out of my own frustration with trying to get a mortgage. I had some experience in the industry and was looking to find a mortgage to buy my first home, but I didn’t want to spend weeks waiting for an appointment with the bank, I didn’t want to trawl through the thousands of options on a comparison site, and I didn’t want to go through an inconsistent and slow process with a broker, so I thought I would build Trussle to solve the problem for myself and many other aspirational homeowners like me.
What kind of traction have you gained so far?
I started the business in January 2015, and since then we’ve grown up to a team of 20 people, we’ve secured just under £6m in venture capital, and we’ve secured strategic partnerships with some of the biggest household names out there such as Zoopla, House Simple, You Switch and Noddle, to name a few. We’ve also reached a big milestone of having £1bn of mortgages under management on behalf of thousands of UK homeowners across the country.
And what next, what does 2017 have in store for Trussle?
So I spoke about mortgage management – or mortgage mismanagement, rather – and that’s the key issue we’re trying to focus on. Around three million households in the UK are on their SVR rate and overspending around £3.5k a year more than they need to. We’re trying to firmly put that on the public agenda this year and developing the team, the product and the proposition around that to really bring that to light.