Canadian Startup Bazinga! Transforms Condos into Communities

While some of us might call a condo home, sometimes it really doesn’t feel like a community. So Vancouver-based startup bazinga is changing the way people interact with their neighbours and interface with their homes.

It’s been three years of research and development for founder Joseph Nakhla, whose core principle is building beautiful products. Nakhla had been the COO of a successful financial service company for more than 14 years and was seeking an opportunity to build something special, something different, something global, when he devled into the idea of bazinga.

Early in the process the bazinga team felt things like booking the elevator shouldn’t be difficult. Reserving the party room for a child’s birthday party shouldn’t require a fax machine, and getting the strata minutes distributed shouldn’t mean a tree’s chopped down every time. Communities should be flourishing, but concrete walls can create a sense of obscurity.

Communication and information is scattered, and the only way to connect with neighbors can be remembering to read the lobby noticeboard. Bazinga’s application has been designed to empower the entire community with information, make shared assets accessible, and create opportunities to connect with neighbors.

 

 

Nakhla and his team can be deemed a three-year overnight success. It’s noteworthy that once the product was market ready, they took only 30 days from the first demo to secure a paying customer. With bazinga, all condo residents are assigned access to the application at the point of purchase. This often happens in the pre-sale phase. The developer uses bazinga for communication and the app is used to educate the residents with information about the building, condo living, strata structure.

Their first clients include Bosa Properties, Aquilini Development, the Onni Group, Port Capital, and Alpha Beta. Paolo Aquilini certainly has good things to say: “At Aquilini Development we are always looking for ways to enhance the quality of life for those who choose to live in the homes we build. Bazinga is one of the most exciting technologies we have seen in years to positively impact people’s condo living. The feedback from our first two buildings using bazinga has been very positive.

Bazinga looks to continue their current upward trajectory, recently securing a $3.5 million second round of financing. They have raised $5 million to date, and are adding to their team of 20 with new developers and designers.

Currently more than 20 buildings have signed up for the application in both BC and Ontario. They have strong international aspirations too. There is number of international parties looking at bazinga for their markets – condo living is very similar around the world, and the bazinga team isn’t in the business of setting territorial boundaries.