This deep tech startup makes property renovation a breeze for professionals

The Indian contracting and design industry has not been able to keep pace with new India still using archaic methods of design, development, and site work processes. It has led to a chaotic, inefficient, and unorganised sector with far below par contribution to the Indian economy.  

Being an architect and interior designer, Debashree Ghatak was always aware of the challenges being faced by contractors working on her various sites in transacting digitally and managing their businesses, especially shortly after demonetization. 

“The community of contractors are very skilled in their hands-on work but still lag behind in using digital tools. We have always wanted to help them,” says Debashree.

With a vision to address the large untapped real estate improvement industry and help professionals digitize their businesses as well as improve cashflows, ReNEWate was built in the year 2018. 

The husband-wife duo and co-founders of ReNEWate, Supratik Ghatak and Debashree Ghatak, bring with them several decades of experience in both real estate and technology domains, having both national and international experience in architectural and interior design, project management, supply chain management, landscaping, building construction, material selection, cataloguing and application. 

How it works

The contractor digitisation app helps all property improvement professionals including carpenters, civil contractors, painters, interior designers, electrical contractors and others to improve the way they sell, report and get paid with the help of the smart tools in the ReNEWate app. This helps them save time and money. 

“ReNEWate uses the latest tech in AR and AI with native language support to bridge the skill gap and power a new digital age for property improvement professionals and contractors,” adds Supratik Ghatak

With a team of 20 members, the Pune-based startup claims to be the first of its kind in India to build such a platform supporting millions of renovation contractors, property improvement professionals, and agencies to manage their business digitally. 

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Business model

Contractors, designers and architects save time, grow their business, and improve cash flow and get a wide range of benefits that ReNEWate brings in terms of raw material pricing as well as offers. For all this, ReNEWate charges a small percentage of the transactional amount creating a win-win business model.

The platform claims to have more than 25,000 users across the web and mobile app.

Growth and market

According to reports by PwC/ JLL and Global Market Insights, India’s property improvement market is upwards of $50 billion annually. ReNEWate is filling an important gap in this multi-billion-dollar industry by digitizing contractors, designers and architects with a mobile-first vernacular-first app that brings a simple yet powerful tool in their hands to convert requests into confirmed projects faster, manage them efficiently, get information on latest material trends and close the loop by accepting digital payments and dramatically improving their cash flows, thus helping them work smarter.

The technology is used by numerous contractors, design companies, small and medium decor shop owners, and has empowered them to use easy to understand technology to improve sales cycles, manage their business better and substantially increase their revenue. 

In October 2020, the startup raised a pre-seed round of $272,000 (Rs 2 crore) from Better Capital. With this capital, the deep tech startup plans to expand its product offerings, accelerate growth, and further the development of its technology offerings to simplify and improve the end-to-end workflow for property improvement professionals.

The startup has earlier received a grant from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and IIMCIP for being one of the top Smart 50 startups. ReNEWate was also part of Brigade REAP — Asia’s first property tech accelerator programme.

Future plan

Any progress in this industry will further help growth in many aligned industries, increase employment and encourage entrepreneurship to further transform India into a modern developed nation.

“ReNEWate is on a mission towards creating a shared economy for a better India, an aspirational India of millions of entrepreneurs in this industry. ReNEWate wants to be a feature rich platform of choice that is used by every contractor and designer and thus empowers them to add the digital advantage to manage and scale their business faster,” says Debashree.