The real estate and infrastructure company GARBE, in collaboration with the start-up factory Futury, has awarded the first fellows as part of their funding programme "Futury Vordenker Fellowships powered by GARBE". The awards were presented at the GARBE Vordenker Conference 2026. The founding team reperks, consisting of Timon Ivens and Robin Lais, as well as Christoph Ehler, were honoured. These projects are characterised by high potential for the real estate industry and aim to optimise process efficiency and data analysis.
The selected innovators will receive financial support totalling EUR 10,000. Additionally, the fellows will benefit from twelve months of executive mentoring by GARBE specialists and integration into Futury's innovation ecosystem. Thomas Kallenbrunnen, Managing Director of GARBE Capital & Strategy and GARBE Infrastructure, stated that the awarded projects provided convincing answers to various challenges in the real estate industry. He emphasised the intention to support the further development of these solutions and prepare them for practical application.
reperks is developing an AI agent for automating utility bill settlements. This agent is designed to automate the entire process, from invoice receipt to objection management. Robin Lais, co-founder of reperks, explained that the AI agent enables real estate companies and property managers to generate largely automated utility bill settlements within minutes, with the current focus on the residential sector. Timon Ivens, also co-founder of reperks, added that the logical next step is the deployment of the software in the commercial sector, with GARBE serving as a partner for gaining initial experience in the logistics and local supply sectors.
Christoph Ehler, a doctoral candidate at TU Darmstadt and active at the Real Estate Institute of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, is working on a machine learning model for automated property valuation and price forecasting. Based on big data, the model aims to enable greater objectivity in property valuation and more precisely identify relevant value factors. Ehler stated that his goal is to establish data-driven tools more firmly in the real estate industry and translate the scientific approach of his model into practice.
Melissa Ott, Managing Director of Futury, highlighted that the programme aims to foster outstanding talents who drive forward the real estate and construction industry with their ideas. She emphasised that with reperks and Christoph Ehler, talents with great entrepreneurial potential are being supported to transform their ideas into scalable solutions for the real estate industry.
