APPTSUMMIT 2026 Speaker Spotlight: Bruno Loreto on Why Africa’s PropTech Winners Will Finance, Not Just Digitise

Bruno Loreto founded Terracotta Ventures in 2019 with Marcus Anselmo and Adir Filho to back PropTech and construction-tech companies in Latin America — a market with a huge property sector but, at the time, a venture ecosystem that did not understand it. Seven years on, it is one of Latin America’s largest venture investors specialising in property and construction, and has grown from a pure venture fund into a broader platform spanning investment, an investor community and, most recently, alternative funding structures for the real estate assets its portfolio touches.

On 13 October he will be in Lagos for APPTSUMMIT 2026, the inaugural Africa PropTech Priority Summit, taking part in a fireside chat, “Building a PropTech Ecosystem: Lessons from Latin America on Collaboration Between Founders, Developers & Investors”. Ahead of the summit, Property News Africa — the event’s Official Digital Media Partner — asked him about developer-backed funds, why Terracotta moved into credit, and what would make investors like him write a first cheque on the continent. His answers, lightly edited for length, are below.

The interview

Tell us about Terracotta Ventures. What gap in the market led you to launch, and where is the portfolio today?

We launched Terracotta in 2019 — Marcus, Adir and I — as a venture capital firm backing PropTech and construction-tech in Latin America. The gap we saw was clear: a huge, dynamic real estate market, but a venture ecosystem that didn’t really understand property, and founders who couldn’t find investors who did.

We started as VC-only. What changed over the years is that we stopped thinking of ourselves as just a fund and started building around the whole ecosystem — a community of investors and entrepreneurs, our Insider platform and Radar publications, and more recently structuring funding for the real estate assets connected to our investment theses. Today the portfolio spans 18 companies on track for around R$600 million (roughly US$110 million) in combined revenue this year. The through-line is the same as in 2019 — we go where capital, technology and real estate meet — but the way we operate there has grown a lot broader.

Your first fund had developers and suppliers among its investors. What did that change about how the fund operates, and is it a model you’d recommend for Africa?

It’s true we have players like a major homebuilder and a steelmaker among our investors — but our core base is something less obvious and, I’d argue, more powerful: mid-sized regional entrepreneurs. These are business owners with deep roots in their local property markets, and they bring far more than capital — they bring deal flow, sector knowledge and a real operator’s view of where value is created. That changes how the fund works: our investors aren’t passive LPs, they’re strategic partners who help us find opportunities and pressure-test them.

For Nigeria and the wider African market, I’d absolutely recommend this model. Where formal institutional capital is still thin, aligning with regional operators who know the ground is often more valuable than chasing large anchor institutions.

Terracotta has been moving beyond equity into credit and receivables structures. Why, and what does that tell us about where PropTech capital is heading?

It came from following our own portfolio. As a VC, you back great companies — but in real estate you quickly hit a wall: the businesses and the assets they touch need capital that pure equity doesn’t provide. So expanding into credit and receivables was a natural step, letting us fund the real estate assets tied to our theses, not just the tech layer on top of them.

I think that reflects where PropTech capital is heading more broadly. The first wave was software; the next is embedding capital and credit into the property value chain itself. The firms that win won’t be pure-tech plays — they’ll be the ones who pair technology with new ways of financing land, construction and housing.

Brazil and Nigeria share large housing deficits, high interest rates and informal land and rental markets. Which lessons from Latin American PropTech transfer directly to Africa, and which don’t?

What transfers is the core insight: in markets with large housing deficits, high interest rates and informal land and rental markets, the real opportunity is in financing and formalising, not just digitising. Solutions that unlock capital, bring transparency to receivables, or take cost out of construction travel very well between Brazil and Nigeria.

What doesn’t transfer cleanly is the plumbing — regulation, land titling and credit infrastructure are deeply local, and you can’t copy-paste a Brazilian funding structure into Nigeria and expect it to work. The mindset transfers; the mechanics have to be rebuilt on the ground. That’s precisely why local partnership matters so much.

What are you looking for in an African PropTech founder or company, and what would make Terracotta write a first cheque on the continent?

Founders who understand that in real estate, distribution and capital are everything — a great product with no path to the people who control deals and money doesn’t scale. I look for people solving a real financing or execution bottleneck, not adding a digital layer for its own sake.

What would make investors like us write a first cheque on the continent: real local insight, a business that touches the flow of capital or transactions rather than just information, and ideally a model where our experience structuring alternative funding in Brazil compounds what they’re building. A strong local partner who helps us read the ground would accelerate that enormously.

Snapshot: Bruno Loreto and Terracotta Ventures

About Bruno Loreto

Bruno Loreto is the founder and CEO of Terracotta Ventures, a Brazilian real estate investment and venture firm focused on the future of property funding. Terracotta operates at the intersection of capital, technology and real estate — structuring alternative funding vehicles for developers, backing PropTech and construction-tech companies, and building one of Brazil’s leading ecosystems of real estate investors and entrepreneurs through its Terracotta Insider community. Bruno works across fund management, deal structuring and capital markets, with a particular focus on how emerging markets can unlock new sources of real estate funding beyond traditional bank credit. He is a recognised voice on real estate innovation in Brazil, writing and speaking regularly on capital, PropTech and the transformation of how property gets financed and built. An economist with an MBA from Insper, he has more than 15 years’ experience in businesses spanning technology, capital and property, and has been investing in ventures that reposition the sector since 2016. He describes his work as sitting at the intersection of “future-proof real estate” and “capital intelligence”: turning emerging investment theses into concrete decisions and projects, and connecting entrepreneurs and investors with greater clarity, governance and long-term rationale.

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