As a recognized authority in Banking, Business, and Finance, Priya Jaiswal has a unique vantage point on the convergence of traditional finance and disruptive technology. With Stake, a proptech firm she has helped guide, recently closing an oversubscribed $31 million Series B funding round, her insights into the future of real estate investment are more relevant than ever. This latest capital injection, led by Emirates NBD, brings Stake’s total funding to an impressive $58 million and signals a new phase of aggressive expansion and innovation. We delve into the strategic thinking behind this growth, exploring the nuances of managing a diverse investor base, the firm’s cross-border ambitions, and the game-changing potential of regulated tokenization in the MENA region.
With Emirates NBD leading your $31 million Series B round, what specific strategic value does a major bank bring beyond capital? Please share some practical examples of how this partnership will directly accelerate your growth plans.
Having a financial titan like Emirates NBD lead our round is a massive vote of confidence that goes far beyond the capital itself. For us, this isn’t just a transaction; it’s a deep strategic alignment. A major bank provides institutional credibility that is incredibly powerful, especially as we expand into new markets like Saudi Arabia. It opens doors and builds trust instantly. Practically, this partnership gives us access to a vast network and deep financial infrastructure, which can accelerate everything from customer acquisition to developing more sophisticated investment products. It’s a powerful endorsement that tells the market we are a secure, regulated, and serious player in the real estate investment space.
Your latest funding round included a diverse mix of VCs and property firms like Property Finder and Ellington Properties. How do you balance their different strategic inputs, and can you share an anecdote where this unique investor blend created a new opportunity for Stake?
It’s a fantastic challenge to have such a rich blend of expertise at the table. We see it as a strategic advantage, not a balancing act. VCs like MEVP and STV NICE bring invaluable experience in scaling tech companies globally, pushing us on metrics and growth hacking. On the other hand, industry players like Property Finder and Ellington Properties provide unparalleled on-the-ground real estate intelligence and access to premium deal flow. For instance, a casual conversation with our partners at Ellington about investor pain points in full property acquisition directly informed the feature roadmap for our StakeOne solution. That’s the magic—combining deep industry knowledge with the venture-backed mindset to build products that people truly need.
You’ve highlighted Saudi Arabia as a high-potential market for expansion. Could you outline the key steps you’ll take to deploy the new capital there, and explain how your US market entry strategy will differ from your successful approach in the UAE?
Saudi Arabia is an absolute priority for us, and we’re incredibly excited about the potential there. Our first step is to aggressively deploy this new capital to deepen our footprint, leveraging the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) license we already hold. This means scaling our local team, expanding our property portfolio, and launching targeted marketing campaigns to educate the market. Our US entry, planned for October 2025, will be a different playbook. In the UAE, we built our reputation from the ground up since our founding in 2020. For the US, we’ll enter as a more mature company, focusing on strategic partnerships and a cross-border investment model that allows our existing global user base to access a new, highly sought-after market from day one.
StakeOne now provides investors with access to full property ownership. Could you explain how this solution complements your core fractional investment model, and what specific metrics are you tracking to measure its success with partners like Emaar and Dubai Holding?
StakeOne is a natural and crucial evolution of our platform. While our core fractional model has democratized real estate for our two million users, we realized many were graduating to a point where they wanted to own an entire property. StakeOne caters to that demand, offering a seamless digital path to full ownership with premier developers like Emaar and Dubai Holding. It complements our fractional model perfectly by creating a complete investment journey on one platform. Success for us is measured by the volume of full properties transacted, the feedback from our developer partners on the efficiency of the process, and, most importantly, the rate at which our fractional investors transition to become full owners through StakeOne.
Having received In-Principle Approval from VARA for tokenization, what are the next concrete steps in your collaboration with Property Finder? Please detail how this initiative will practically improve liquidity and transparency for your two million users across 181 countries.
Receiving the In-Principle Approval from VARA was a landmark moment for us and the entire regional proptech scene. It’s the green light we needed to start building the future. Our next concrete steps involve working closely with both VARA and Property Finder to build out the robust technical and regulatory framework for a secondary market. For our users, this isn’t just a buzzword. This will mean they can potentially trade their fractional shares in properties much like they trade stocks, bringing unprecedented liquidity to a historically illiquid asset class. The transparency of the blockchain will allow every user, whether in Dubai or 180 other countries, to see transaction histories, enhancing trust and making real estate investment more fluid than ever before.
What is your forecast for the future of fractional and tokenized real estate investment in the MENA region?
I am incredibly bullish. We are at the very beginning of a seismic shift in how people own and trade property in this region. The combination of strong regulatory support, as we’ve seen from bodies like the DFSA and VARA, and a young, tech-savvy population creates the perfect environment for explosive growth. In the next five years, I predict fractional ownership will become a mainstream investment category, and tokenization will unlock a secondary market that dramatically increases liquidity and investor participation. We’re moving away from a slow, opaque system to one that is digital, transparent, and accessible to everyone, and the MENA region is poised to lead that global transformation.
