Serial entrepreneurs launch Zamoona to make real-estate listing easy and accessible
Anant and Ashish Goel are serial entrepreneurs who founded UrSqFt, a real estate consulting and transactions firm, and a property listing portal Zamoona. The duo used property listing websites for their consulting firm’s research and marketing needs and discovered a relevant gap between what users’ want and are offered as far as property listing is concerned.
“We were interacting with hundreds of owners, seekers and fellow service providers in real estate sector. The more we dug, the more motivated we became to bring our second startup Zamoona to life,” says Anant.
Zamoona is a progression in the domain of online property portals and an attempt to mitigate the inherent issues in the working model of existing market leaders. The startup uniquely caters to seekers’ needs by placing their requirements at the forefront. With Zamoona, seekers find, buy or rent real estate properties easily by leveraging its strong search, filter and map centric approach.
The platform introduces location specific, searchable requirements on map with ability to directly propose a property to seekers and importantly it promises zero spam (unwanted calls, messages and emails) via its unique 'interaction platform' which maintains the anonymity of both the parties.
Since its launch in October last year, over 6700 verified owners have listed their properties for sale or rent on Zamoona. “At present around 700 plus seekers are using Zamoona to advertise their requirements,” adds Ashish. The platform currently focuses on Delhi (NCR) encompassing Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad.
Prior to launching UrSqFt, Anant, an INSEAD graduate was an associate partner at Gallup's London office and had successful stints with IT majors Capgemini and TCS across the UK, Europe, US, Singapore, India and Japan. Ashish has over a decade-long experience in managing, architecting, designing and developing software applications at Prudential, Zurich Financial Services, HCL and TIL among others.
When asked about the property listing space getting overcrowded with more than half a dozen VC-funded ventures, Ashish points out, “We believe that a carefully crafted solution, based on deep analysis and industry expertise, can differentiate one from the crowd. We have started strong and hope to rope in the required support as we progress along our chosen strategy.”
Adds Anant, “Having spent over a decade outside India, and travelling fortnightly for more than a year, our biggest challenge was to re-establish contacts and find motivated employees with verifiable referrals.” To become the go-to place for any real estate need Zamoona will follow ‘penetration first’ approach when it comes to geographic expansion. The startup plans to roll-out a slew of features to maintain a differentiated position.
With more than half a dozen well funded startups like 99acres, Magicbricks, Commonfloor and Housing.com trying to woo property owners and seekers, it would be interesting to watch how Zamoona fares up.
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