Real Estate is not e-commerce. It’s not just about leads.
Focus should be on the deals, but with a human touch. Settlin plans to furnish an experience that India has never had.
Everyone dreams of buying a home. Whether as an investment opportunity, or for retirement stability or just a plain and simple gift, a property transaction is something the people want, do and simultaneously dread! Especially in the secondary market. Still, deals are happening. In urban Bangalore alone, the resale transactions comprise 60% of the overall with 6000 resale deals per month.
The ideation
Ashish, while working as a real estate broker, figured out this discrepancy and tried to remove it. He worked on systems to increase transparency and professionalism in the sector. In the process, he also met Parth, the co-founder of FinanceBuddha, seeking help with the augmented service offerings of home loans to the property buyers. Parth realised the potential of this dream, and they started to work together on it.
But it wasn’t long, when they figured out that all this needs much advanced and integrated technology than they already had. In the meanwhile, Sudhanshu (Ashish’s langotiya friend) was in Bangalore as the technology head for Autoninja. He was passionate about starting up, but had rejected infinite technology ideas, which could have potentially been ground-breaking, based on the single fact that there was no proper revenue/profit model.
But boy oh boy, when they met, it took him minutes to get convinced with the immense opportunity that he could be part of. Settlin was conceptualised.
The strategy
They took almost 8 months to research the existing successful models, from India (all classifieds + Homeshikari), US (RedFin, Zillow, Trulia) and Europe (KnightFrank) and Asia (Greyloft). They found it to be the best to start with the secondary markets, in order to create a niche. They pointed out the problems:
- Huge complexity in maintaining the real-time inventory, with all relevant information (both legal and material)
- Need of property inspection before a transaction
They envisioned that the technology needed physical infrastructure. Property visits are the most crucial part and they need to get their feet on ground for that. They understood that it will bring an operational and scalability challenge. So they settled on an Oyo rooms / Uber kind of a model, wherein they could have a platform which can get existing brokerages on the field with the entire relationship being managed by Settlin.
The execution
Since January, 2016, they have been testing this model. They have developed a technology platform with the following capabilities currently:
- Detailed decision-ready property data
- Inspection Management
- Feedback analysis, to optimise the price
- Weed out bogus customers, and help the genuine ones come to a conclusion
Simultaneously, they are also prototyping a brokerage business model, based on their platform. By June 2016, they have achieved 100 resale visits per month (in Marathahalli/Whitefield area), through just a single part-time sales executive. And, the best part, the revenue has started pouring in!
The promise
They plan to make this prototype self sustainable by December, and then expand in entire Bangalore. By 2020, when the real estate market will be at $180 billion (source: IBEF), they plan to get into both residential (primary and secondary) and commercial real estate, with complete presence in all the metros.
They wish you the best, and assure you of an impeccable service quality and complete transparency, whenever you decide to Settle.
