The world's first digital real estate market, ALT DRX, was introduced by Bengaluru-based fintech startup ALT Realtech. It enables investors to purchase one square foot of real estate at a time. The business, which plans to operate in India first, has secured $1.6 million in equity and $2 million in callable mezzanine debt as part of its seed round for co-investing in real estate assets. One of India's leading legal firms, well-known family offices, prominent startup founders, and senior executives from MNCs all participated in ALT DRX's seed round as investors. According to Anand Narayanan, Founder, ALT Realtech, “ALT DRX expects the new platform to solve the problem of illiquidity in mid-size real estate assets and possibly open the gates for capital to move into socially relevant, rent-yielding real estate assets such as rental housing, hostels, care homes, holiday homes, schools, industrial warehousing, high-street retail, hotels, and managed offices.” Owners of these real estate assets will be able to convert their real estate ownership into tokenized, traceable digital assets thanks to ALT DRX. “Our platform will help, say, a 50,000-square-foot building to be tokenized into 50,000 tradeable digital assets, each holding an economic value proportionate to 1 square foot of the said property,” he said. The pre-qualified, KYC-compliant registered customers on its platform can then instantly buy, hold, trade, and settle these tradeable digital assets. Avinash Rao, Founder, ALT Realtech said, “The platform uses a permissioned, centrally managed blockchain-based ledger protocol that restricts the transfer of these digital assets to foreigners while attempting to build user credibility by using Zero Trust Architecture. “The democratisation of real estate ownership by dematerializing it empowers everyone to co-own high-quality residential as well as commercial real estate managed by professionals,” added Rao. Global equities and bonds are currently valued at $170 trillion, while the value of the real estate sector is $230 trillion.