Interview with Jatin Ondhia, CEO at Shojin Property Partners

At Shojin, we’re looking to change the way in which individuals from across the globe gain access to and invest in institutional-grade real estate opportunities in the UK. The property sector is one of the last industries to be disrupted by technology and the online property investment market is still in its relative infancy.

We operate in an online real estate investment market which is forecast to grow from $15bn today to $800bn by 2027 and Shojin’s platform is designed to make property investment accessible, simple and affordable. Investors can access institutional-grade development projects for as little as £5,000, with the company ultimately aiming to incrementally lower this threshold to under £100 as demand and liquidity increases.

Our platform empowers fractional investing in real estate developments, primarily focusing on residential, PRS (private rented sector), senior, and student accomodation projects. When looking for property investment opportunities, we do extremely detailed due diligence. As we focus on mid-market opportunities, we have very strong deal-flow and are able to cherry-pick the best deals that minimise risk while generating strong returns.

We believe in our investments and we take large upfront fees. Shojin invests its own capital into every project, puts itself in a first loss position, and shares profits at the end. This alignment of interests is crucial for trust; not only will Shojin lose its investment first if a project fails, it only makes money when its investors get paid.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Today, 1% of the adult population controls 45% of global wealth, with real estate influential in building and sustaining fortunes. The next 9% (400 million people) have investible funds of between $100k and $1m but are typically restricted to mainstream equities, bonds, and funds – and therefore relatively unimpressive returns.

My co-founder Sandeep Puri and I founded the business because we wanted to change this. We were actually self-funded for quite a long time and had built successful property portfolios, using the proceeds to fund growth. Friends became interested in what we were doing and wanted to invest alongside us, which led to expanding the business to give more people the opportunity to participate and becoming an FCA-regulated fintech platform for co-investment.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
Against the odds, we have continued to grow during the pandemic. Every one of our funded projects continued to perform well. We used the opportunity afforded by a natural pause in the market to work on our underlying systems and processes for both analysing new projects as well as engaging with investors.

During this period we launched the first stage of our Series A fundraising campaign for the company, which was very well received in the market. We also built further relationships to bring in anchor investors and underwriters for our projects, so that we could scale strongly once the market opened up again.
 

What can we hope to see from Shojin Property Partners in the future?

 
We’re always looking to the future and beyond our current UK market. We have ambitions to continue broadening the pool of potential investors and enabling working people from all professions to invest in real estate.

We recognise that there are a number of high-growth markets out there, such as East Asia, India and Africa, places where we already have good relationships with investors. We want to invest in these emerging markets and change the landscape of real estate investment, so that the many, not the few, can benefit from it.