Bilt Rewards, a New York-based startup that operates a loyalty platform the place customers can earn factors on hire funds, has greater than doubled its valuation to $3.1 billion – and added NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and former American Specific CEO Ken Chenault to its board.
Led by former Tinder government Ankur Jain, the New York-based startup scored $200 million in its newest funding spherical led by funding agency Basic Catalyst, the corporate mentioned Wednesday.
Eldridge, Left Lane Capital, Camber Creek and Prosus Ventures additionally participated within the spherical.
Bilt generates its income by serving because the fee processor for rental agency companions and by taking a reduce of buyer spending. The agency additionally has a branded Mastercard that enables customers to rack up factors on sure transactions.
Chenault, who is understood for serving to to pioneer rewards applications at American Specific, is becoming a member of Bilt as chairman of the board. He’s additionally chairman and managing director at Basic Catalyst. Goodell is serving as an unbiased director.
“There’s no one on this planet who understands this sort of rewards platform, candidly, higher than Ken,” Jain mentioned in an interview with The Submit. “He constructed it with native retailers again within the day and now we get to create a model of that centered actually on neighborhood and native due to our platform with the condo buildings.”
Jain described the NFL as “the most important hometown loyalty firm on this planet” and mentioned Goodell may present useful steering on how Bilt can successfully faucet “neighborhood delight and loyalty” whereas increasing its rewards program to native communities.
Bilt plans to make use of the freshly raised funds to gasoline an ongoing “strategic growth” of its “Neighborhood Rewards” program, which permits customers to earn factors and different advantages via transactions at native companies.
Jain cited plans to broaden the service to extra eating places in addition to grocery shops, gasoline stations, pharmacies and low retailers over time. Bilt can be eyeing additional growth into single-family and rental housing, in addition to a deliberate entrance into the mortgage market later this yr.
“Rental and mortgage funds eat 30% of family earnings on common within the US,” Chenault mentioned in an announcement. “Bilt is reworking this market by empowering and rewarding renters and householders for his or her month-to-month funds and on a regular basis spend with native retailers.”
Goodell described Bilt as an innovator within the rewards house, empowering the following technology to show hire and bills into unforgettable experiences.”
“I’m proud to hitch a board that shares the NFL’s values of hometown loyalty whereas innovating and delivering for its members,” the commissioner added.
The corporate is energetic in all 50 states and has “a whole lot” of housing corporations as companions, together with greater than half of the highest 50 residential homeowners and operators, in response to Jain. Members of its “rental alliance” embody trade giants corresponding to Associated Firms, Starwood and Cushman & Wakefield.
Lower than two years after its debut, the startup is worthwhile, with practically $20 billion in annual spending by its members. Bilt has about 125 workers and isn’t planning to spice up headcount throughout its growth, Jain mentioned.
Whereas Bilt launched lower than three years in the past, Jain mentioned the thought behind the platform started percolating shortly after he stepped down as Tinder’s vice chairman of product in 2017.
The 33-year-old mentioned he grew “so pissed off” by the variety of Silicon Valley startups that have been centered on classes corresponding to cryptocurrency, electrical scooters or juice presses quite than the broader points affecting the area, corresponding to housing affordability.
“We’ve got the most important housing affordability crises, healthcare crises, folks can’t repay their scholar loans and persons are losing all their time on crypto and scooters,” Jain mentioned. “We’ve got to give attention to the massive challenges going through our technology. If we did that, my speculation was that these are the true trillion-dollar markets — not the shiny object of the second.”