Hocomoco - a proptech startup offering construction tracking services

The real estate boom has come and gone, but proptech, as a business, is yet to find its mark in India. Innovative technology brought online property marketplaces to the forefront, making life easier for both buyers and sellers. But now, with that space overcrowded with many players, the real estate industry has begun to look at platforms that help with efficiency throughout the construction lifecycle, and here, data comes to the rescue.

Hocomoco, a tech-based home construction and monitoring company, helps residential and commercial builders by providing data and being the one stop solution for all kinds of construction needs.

"Our services primarily include residential and commercial construction execution, and everything else associated with construction like architectural and structural design, project management, interiors and smart homes, legal permissions, and monitoring services," says Sripad Nandiraj, founder of Hocomoco.

The early days

Hocomoco was founded in 2017 by Sripad when several of his friends found property renovations to be a challenge. While assisting one of his friends in renovating his house, he realised that none of the organisations in the market, both online and offline, offered end-to-end services that were hassle-free. With no good options, he and his friend had to figure it all out by themselves - zeroing in on every single vendor and construction material from scratch from an unorganised market. Sripad decided to tap into this gap by putting together a platform that would cater to all construction needs in a professional manner.

Prior to starting Hocomoco, Sripad was working with Sabre Holdings, Texas, USA, as a senior business analyst.

The product

Hocomoco is focused on getting some order into the construction industry by targeting a niche market. Customers often face multiple problems such as price fraud, material theft from project site, and project cost overruns, while dealing with different departments involved in a construction project. Customers also face difficulties in evaluating the quality of the structure. To solve these set of issues, Hocomoco started providing solutions like digital tracking and insured work done on the structure. It offered 100 percent transparency in the material used and presented a complete cost breakup.

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Hocomoco also provides customers with flexible service options where the customers can choose to opt for any or all of their services like engineering and monitoring, architectural and design, and interior services exclusively. 

The founder began the company with an investment of less than Rs 25 lakhs, and has since not raised any additional funds.

"I faced several difficulties every step of the way to start this business, but that is what the entrepreneurial journey is all about. A major problem that we faced was in convincing our customers since we had no previous projects to validate our efficiency and quality. There were also challenges in procuring vendors, getting labourers to deliver services as per our quality standards, and winning the trust of suppliers. But with our robust database structure, we were able to tackle all challenges," says Sripad.

Based in Hyderabad, the startup has an office in Bangalore as well. In the next 18 months, Hocomoco is looking forward to achieve, 25,00,000 sqft of built up space, provided they raise funding from venture capitalists. They also plan to expand operations to Tier II cities like Warangal and Kurnool in the future.

According to Indian Brand Equity Foundation, the Indian real estate sector will be a $1 trillion market by 2030. Currently, it stands at around $200 billion. The proptech space will be a $30 billion market by that time from the current size of $250 million.

Hocomoco’s e-monitoring facility is their USP, along with tech applications such as Vendor Management and Material Procurements. The e-monitoring service enables customers to digitally track the progress of their construction project from any part of the world through a simple login.

The customer sites are secured through CCTV monitoring, and this allows customers to get a direct view of the work in progress. CCTV surveillance also reduces the possibility of theft and damage.

Besides e-monitoring, the startup also shares day to day progress reports and time tracking of work completed versus work to be completed.

"We also share workforce report, and a complete material report that empowers the customers to track procurement, usage and available stock in site. We ensure that we maintain a transparent environment with our clients so they understand the cost flow," says Sripad.

Hocomoco team does not want to disclose its revenues. It competes with HomeLane and LivSpace for home interiors projects, and Rhumbix, Safesite and Buildr on the construction and execution space.