Czech executive Marek Sacha sells Schindler's startup BuildingMinds

Marek Sacha, a Czech entrepreneur and the first CEO of the online supermarket Rohlik.cz, has completed the mission that brought him on board at the Swiss industrial giant Schindler four years ago: the startup BuildingMinds, which focuses on digitalizing real estate management, has now been sold to the platform Lookthrough for a sum that CzechCrunch estimates at the low-to-mid tens of millions of euros — roughly a billion Czech crowns.

Schindler, an elevator and escalator maker with a history dating back to 1874 and a market capitalization of around 700 billion crowns, launched the BuildingMinds story in 2018. The company wanted to build a business digitalizing the management of real estate portfolios, helping building owners meet growing ESG reporting and decarbonization requirements. The plans were ambitious — up to 150 million euros (more than 3.5 billion crowns) was earmarked for the project — but progress was slower than expected, and the venture needed a serious restructuring.

That is when Marek Sacha stepped in — a McKinsey alumnus, a veteran of the XOM Materials initiative at the steelmaker Klöckner, and one of the founders of Rohlik.cz, which he led as its first CEO. Under his leadership, BuildingMinds went through a turnaround, and its further development will now be taken over by its new owner, the platform Lookthrough. Sacha himself will gradually move into a non-executive role on the board of directors.

Lookthrough was founded in 2017 in the Swiss town of Herisau by former UBS manager Marcel Staub, who is also behind the consulting group Novarca. The company specializes in decision intelligence for real estate, linking ESG and operational data with financial performance. “BuildingMinds solved the industry's data problem. Together, we're solving the decision-making problem,” Staub said, commenting on the merger.

“Together we cover more than 100,000 buildings within a profitable company. That's rare in this market and crucial for fund and asset managers choosing a long-term technology partner,” Sacha said, commenting on the deal.

The difference in scale is striking: Schindler poured substantial investment into BuildingMinds, which still employs more than a hundred people even after cutbacks, while Lookthrough is roughly an order of magnitude smaller, with revenue in the single-digit millions of euros and a team ten times smaller. At the same time, Schindler is becoming the “largest institutional shareholder” in Lookthrough, suggesting the deal was paid in shares rather than cash.

The exact price of the deal has not been disclosed, and neither side is commenting on it officially. According to CzechCrunch's estimate, based on data from the Swiss commercial register, Schindler's annual reports and comparable deals in the real estate platform market, BuildingMinds is valued in the range of low-to-mid tens of millions of euros — significantly below the amount Schindler was originally prepared to invest in the project.