BENGALURU: After it came into being in 2012 and raised a Series A, Indiaproperty.com has grown to become one of south India’s largest techno smart real estate marketplace. Being both a B2B and a B2C platform, it has successfully trailed classified and open stack blended model and hopes to break even in the next two quarters. CEO Ganesh Vasudevan tells us about his journey.
It was the convergence of two events, first online real estate was a big problem to be solved in bringing more efficiency in the marketing process and secondly there was a large uptick happening in the real estate market post the 2008 global slowdown. The projects that were being launched post the recovery in the top five to six metros larger than what was in supply in 2004-05. Large apartments and villa projects had to be marketed with the Indian consumer being exposed to high quality real estate, the kind that needed professional marketing rather than word of mouth selling.
“We wanted to put in place an efficient platform for the discovery of properties on the one hand for the buyers and on the other, be a marketing platform for real estate sellers. The market was picking up and internet connectivity was improving,” Ganesh tells us.
“The true painpoint of the buyer was not just in discovering property , but also in discovering alternatives that met his requirements. The actual trouble was with the transactions due to the lack of information, a standard regulatory body, which could certify property projects. Then there were legal issues to be understood and assimilated, of getting financial advisory on loans, insurance. So, the journey of discovery was arduous for the buyer,” he says.
Indiaproperty.com was the platform which helped identify these gaps and hurdles for the buyer, from the point of identifying to actual transactions. “The buying of property is a high volume transaction and for people, the most important decision of their lives. We try to simplify this complex and non-linear process,” Ganesh says.
“We are the only full-stack players in the industry who provide complete end-to-end property solutions. Most of this is both online and offline. We provide assisted buying services and have marketing technology platforms in which we create very powerful omnichannel programs through which we could reach out to potential buyers, both domestic and international,” he adds.
Sellers who were facing problem finding buyers, now have it easier. Builders want efficient marketing campaigns, but traditional marketing like print is limited in reach. It is all about digital now and Indiaproperty advises developers on how to go about marketing their property by setting up marketing campaigns.
Builders can create a virtual experience of touring the property and enabling the prospective buyer to experience the finished property which multiplies the communication between buyer and seller several times on the Indiaproperty platform. “We were the first to launch virtual property tours, complete 3-dimensional views of property. A consumer can click on a particular tower on the screen, get in and move through the apartment using a phone or desktop,” Ganesh tells us.
Video tour maps, show the last one km of any property which gives the buyer a glimpse of the neighbourhood.
While the online property start-up segment has been seeing a slew of M&As with PropTiger acquiring Makaan.com, Housing.com merging with PropTiger and MagicBricks acquiring property analytics portal Properji.com, Indiaproperty.com has defied the competition rulebook.