PUDUCHERRY: Imagine being able to see your home and walk through it even before it is completed. Interesting, isn’t it? Sanju Thomas, 26 and Ajesh Joy, 25, with their venture Ghar360 are helping you do exactly that. With fully automated 3D conversion technology, Ghar360, a cloud-based product, helps users see their buildings in an augmented reality platform even before a brick is laid.
Sanju Thomas has a BE degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Coimbatore’s Karunya University and Ajesh Joy has an MBA in HR and Marketing from the same institute. Sanju has five years of IT experience while Ajesh has three years of marketing experience in three companies, with one of them being Intelligo Technologies, a company which was started by the duo.
Ajesh says, “Intelligo dealt with architectural and construction firms from the West Asia. We understood the nitty-gritty of how the startup ecosystem works. My work as a Consultant for Fotobubbles, a company that was into 3D walkthrough and 360 Degree virtual photography helped us a lot during the ideation process for Ghar360.” Registered on August 27 last year, Ghar360 is a product from Techzag solutions. It digitises the floor plan into an interactive walk-able space allowing customers to change the interior decoration any way they want from a pre-loaded catalogue of thousands of real products. Developed using latest technologies like Webgl and HTML5, the service is only available in India, although they are planning to expand overseas.
Incubated at TLabs, a Times Internet initiative, where they received `10 lakh in funding, has helped them get aggressive with hiring and reaching out to bigger players. After having done pilot projects with big
property portals like 99acres and Magicbricks, Ghar360 are in talks with furniture and kitchen cabinet manufacturers to get them on board.
Ghar360 offers different set of fees for different sets of clients like builders, property portals like 99acres, brands and for designers. Planning to break even next year, they are presently investing their moolah on technology and marketing. Ghar360’s founders advice for wannabe entrepreneurs, “Understand real life problems of your potential customers by talking to them and validating the concept. Register the company after you are sure that this business model will work.”
— mathew.maniamkot@gmail.com