realAs wins Westpac innovation award with potential to shake up commercial real estate

Westpac Group and BlueChilli’s Innovation Challenge has been won by realAs’ Josh Rowe, with the competition holders saying the new technology can change commercial real estate.

The Westpac Innovation Challenge, launched in September, has seen realAs win a $40,000 cash prize and a six-month placement in the ‘BlueChilli accelerator program’, which will help develop the website and app. Josh Rowe, chief executive of realAs, believes it will help stamp out underquoting in the industry.

realAs allows real estate consumers, currently residential, to find out what a property is likely to sell for. It uses a complex algorithm that is kept under lock and key.

“This is exactly the kind of leading edge, future-ready idea we were looking for,” said Westpac head of digital business banking Kalpana Gee.

“It has the potential to completely change the way our commercial real estate customers do business.”

Westpac Group head of innovation Ian Hill said that there was a high standard among the five finalists’ ideas.

“The response from the start-up community to our challenge has been phenomenal. We received more than 100 impressive applications. The top five finalists all have impressive ideas, but realAs really shone today,” he said.

Commercial real estate was the focus area of the first challenge, explained BlueChilli founder and chief executive Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin.

“We want to boost start-ups that use technology in smart ways in order to expand the services available to professionals and consumers within their industry,” he said.

The second round of the Innovation Challenge will be next year, focusing on solving business problems for other Westpac business customers from a number of industries.