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Escaping a "Golden Handcuff" Job to Build a Unicorn [Amit Agarwal (NoBroker.com)
163 Plays3 years ago
"This monthly salary is nothing but a trap... you need to come out of this comfort... take some risk."
This powerful statement from Amit Agarwal captures the core dilemma for many successful professionals dreaming of entrepreneurship. It’s a call to action to escape the "golden handcuffs" of a stable, high-paying job and embrace the uncertainty of building something new, a leap Amit himself took to create a billion-dollar company.
Amit Kumar Agarwal is the co-founder and CEO of NoBroker.com, India's first proptech unicorn. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Ahmedabad , Amit left a lucrative career in management consulting and banking to solve a problem he had personally faced. Today, NoBroker is valued at over $1 billion , has raised more than $361 million , serves over 30 million customers , and has saved them over ₹1,100 crores in brokerage fees.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
- Disrupting Information Asymmetry: NoBroker's core mission was to eliminate the real estate broker, who thrived on controlling information, and create a transparent peer-to-peer (C2C) marketplace.
- The Ecosystem Flywheel: The company strategically evolved from a simple listings platform to a full-stack ecosystem offering payments, home loans, and home services. This move was critical for retaining users and increasing their lifetime value.
- A Contrarian Approach to Growth: Unlike many startups, NoBroker focused on a deliberate "market deepening" strategy rather than a rapid "land grab" across cities. They also chose to monetize relatively early, establishing revenue as a key metric from the beginning.
- Forged in Adversity: The company's resilient and frugal "cockroach mentality" was shaped by early struggles, including facing over 20 VC rejections and physical attacks from incensed brokers.
- Technology as the Moat: NoBroker’s competitive advantage is built on technology, particularly its proprietary AI-powered algorithm that detects and blocks brokers from the platform, ensuring the integrity of its C2C model.
Chapters:
[00:28] The Formative Years: From a Civil Servant's Son to an IIT Topper
[07:08] The Consulting Grind & The "Golden Handcuff" of Corporate Life
[12:25] The Entrepreneurial Leap: Why Quitting a Cushy Job is the Biggest Risk
[17:51] The "No Broker" Idea: Solving a Uniquely Indian Problem
[23:00] Early Days & The Wall of Rejection
[28:26] The First Cheque & The "Cockroach Mentality"
[38:54] The Monetization Playbook: Convincing Indians to Pay
[41:14] The Ecosystem Flywheel: From Listings to a Full-Stack Platform
[58:21] NoBrokerHood & The B2B2C Play
[1:01:13] The Vision Ahead: Becoming a Household Name
Hashtags:
#FounderThesis #AmitAgarwal #NoBroker #Startup #Entrepreneurship #Unicorn #Proptech #RealEstateIndia #VentureCapital #DisruptiveInnovation #BusinessStrategy #Scaling #IIT #IIM #IndianStartup
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Transcript
Opening Banter
00:00:01
Speaker
Take a minute, I'm dead. You're not dead. You're not dead. You're not dead.
Inspiration & Educational Background
00:00:28
Speaker
Hi, I am Amit. I am the co-founder and CEO of KnowBroker.com.
00:00:33
Speaker
Not taking a risk is the biggest risk in life. That's how Mark Zuckerberg inspired 35-year-old IIT Kanpur and IIM Amdabad alumni Amit Kumar Agarwal, founder and CEO, NoBroker.in. Amit quit a lucrative career in consulting to start NoBroker in 2014 and there's been no looking back since. Despite early challenges of making investors understand the size of the market and potential of the business, Amit and his team persisted and today,
00:01:01
Speaker
No Broker is the very first unicorn from the PropTech space in India.
Podcast Introduction
00:01:06
Speaker
In this episode of Found a Thesis podcast, Amit Agarwal takes us through his roller coaster ride of building No Broker and talks about the mental models and key strategic insights that make him successful. Here's Amit telling Akshay Dutt about building No Broker.
Family & Upbringing
00:01:21
Speaker
So Amit, what is home for you? Like, where did you grow up?
00:01:25
Speaker
So my father was a civil servant. So he used to get posted every second or third year. So I think so. So across towns in UP, I think I have gone from as unknown town like Gondar, Hamyupur to a better known ones like Mathra or Agra. Like, did you also have similar ambitions as a kid to join the civil services?
00:01:54
Speaker
Yeah, so that's a good question. So my parents, of course, wanted me to give it a try. But somehow, I think I was much more enamored with maths and science, and hence, engineering and IIT seemed to be a challenge. I wouldn't say that I was interested in doing engineering. So you got into IIT Kanpur, which means you must have really studied hard for the interesting ground.
IIT Kanpur Experience
00:02:22
Speaker
So actually what happened was that till I think 8th, 9th, nobody was sure and in 10th I did extremely well in my board examination. So I was among the top 20 in entire UP. So among the merit list and so on and the highest
00:02:40
Speaker
marks in the Agra district and so on. So I think that gave a lot of confidence and also then the direction was said that, okay, the kid is good enough or decent enough. So IIT is a challenge that you should basically pursue. So that's how it went from there. Okay. And how was the IIT Kanpur experience?
00:03:02
Speaker
So IIT Kanpur experience, the first six months was very tough. Coming, leaving home and basically finding out that there are so many people who are much, much smarter than you is the rude awakening because then nobody cares whether you are in the top or in the state because now here people from all India who are working toppers in their own mind are there.
00:03:27
Speaker
So I think first six months was naturalization. And next, then it was a good phase of settling and basically enjoying the hostel culture and having friendship and so on. So I think then I basically got into a groove and then in my engineering branch, I was among the... So in my engineering branch, I was the topper.
00:03:58
Speaker
So, ambition was, so everybody was basically pursuing software as a profession. I wanted to do an MBA, so that was set. But although if you have good marks in your engineering badge, then it is
00:04:15
Speaker
an unstated rule that you need to give GRE and you need to do an analysis.
Career Path & Personal Life
00:04:21
Speaker
So I think I just went with that flow and I gave GRE and I got an admission. And then the interesting story which I must tell you is what happened was that
00:04:34
Speaker
I had a doubt that why is it that so okay so this is coveted everybody wants to do MS who have good marks and hence I'm going there but do I really want to again study engineering?
00:04:51
Speaker
one goal with the flow. So to such an extent, and my parents did not want me to leave the country for obvious reasons. I put US my admission ability. US built the admissions. So on the last day, I was standing, me and my father, we were standing in the queue towards visa processing in the US consulate. And I had a small doubt, moment of doubt, which was to my father.
00:05:15
Speaker
I don't know what to do. Then what? Like you decided to take up a job? Yeah, so I had basically gotten a job from IIT in CTS, which was Cognizant Technology Solutions in Puna. So basically I took that job and my IIT batchmate, who is now my wife, Prankar. Was it a college romance? No, it was not college romance.
00:05:44
Speaker
I think we are just good friends in college but both of us then eventually she also got a job in Pune in geometric and I think then then those two years we basically spent together this was the cause and then in those in that period then I learned a bit of coding and then prepared for MBA. I must have been like a similar experience like initially you must have realized that
00:06:10
Speaker
there are like so many great people over there correct correct so I am the bath was of course quite tough in terms of the rigor academic rigor that they have and it is not only just first semester it continues to the to the entire first year and basically what I remember is that MBA in I am the bath is like that is a big
00:06:33
Speaker
a hose of water or a hose of knowledge which is basically just gushing out and you have small palms and whatever you can gather because so many subjects, so many good professors and so much to learn but you need to just think about the exams and the quizzes but yes amazing institute and of course amazing set of people.
00:06:58
Speaker
No doubt. Okay. And you joined consulting, which I guess is like the most coveted job on campus to join consulting. Correct. So that was also with that flow that whatever is difficult to achieve, you basically pursue that rather than whether you really like consulting or not.
00:07:18
Speaker
but with so investment banking and consulting were the coveted positions so hence consulting but I think something which happened was that consulting I really loved I was not sure whether I will love it but consulting was something which was very challenging because this entire feeling that you land at a client's place
00:07:45
Speaker
And the CEO has hired you and CEO has basically said that you reduce cost or you increase revenue and so on. So he is clear about some agenda and he knows that these guys basically need help and they are missing some things and he wants someone to find out. But the moment you land at the client's place, people who are at the middle level and who are even the head of that particular function, they hate you.
00:08:15
Speaker
So I think that feeling of being very unwelcome on day one and the fact that every time you give a presentation to the CEO, everybody else sitting in the room wants to find a fault in what you are presenting and saying.
00:08:36
Speaker
I think that either people find it too much to bear or they just enjoy it. I think I fell into the second category. So I simply enjoyed that challenge and that so-called being on your toes and slight fear that you need to do your job very, very well. So basically when I started, I basically worked with a leading South Indian bank where the objective was to
00:09:00
Speaker
look at how we can improve the operational effectiveness and reduce cost. So which basically involved going through the entire centralized operations, branch operations and going into detail. So when was that? Second assignment, one assignment which I loved was with a private leading bank in which the objective was to increase revenue.
00:09:26
Speaker
And the insights were amazing. The effort was huge. So IBC did assignment across eight years, which was across banking and financial services. And the objective basically ranged from increased revenue, reduced cost, increased revenue upon cost ratio, improved profitability, reduced operational risks across the horizon, but mostly driven by CXO level people.
00:09:52
Speaker
Hm, okay, okay, okay. And which is probably why you eventually joined a bank after that?
From Consulting to Banking
00:09:58
Speaker
Yes. Because all your experience was in banks. Correct. So, so I basically, almost out of this eight years, I think five to six years, I traveled from Monday morning to Friday morning. Every day. That you get up, you put a llama for 3.30 in the morning because you want to take the first flight because you want to reach the client's location by nine.
00:10:21
Speaker
And on Friday evening, you always want to basically complete your work till, do your work till 6-7pm, which means you take the last flight, which almost always get delayed. And it basically means you will reach home past midnight. And you were living in Bangalore only that time?
00:10:38
Speaker
So, I lived in Bangalore. In fact, we also lived in Calcutta for a year because the assignment was longish. So, we temporarily shifted to Calcutta. Then I moved to Bombay because most of the banks had their head offices in Bombay. So, then I moved to Bombay. And after that, after this long stint, when I changed, then I joined the Oslo Newsland Bank in Bombay itself.
00:11:07
Speaker
And this was like, did they have operations here or what was it like? So what ANZ bank did was a long time back in 90s. It was the largest bank in the country in terms of the number of branches that they had.
00:11:25
Speaker
and then they sold their two standard chartered, which now basically has become the largest bank in terms of number of branches, because RBI then stopped giving branches, too many branches to the foreign banks. And I think that was Harshad Mehta's scam, and ANZ was in some way involved, and they feared about the reputation. So they sold them, but they have come back in the past 10 years, and now they may do corporate banking, they don't do retail banking, but they have decent size, and they're doing well.
00:11:54
Speaker
So corporate banking means companies who have international dealings who would want an international bank to have their accountants. The difference between corporate, yeah, you are right. So that is anyway there. But the difference between corporate and retail banking is that they will not give a home loan or a personal loan. They will give a loan to a reliance. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I guess this is the time when that entrepreneurship, because
00:12:24
Speaker
So tell me about that. What made you want to quit a well-paying job and start from scratch? Yeah, so a couple of stories there. One was that these two years with the ANZ bank was amazing in terms of comfort.
Entrepreneurial Leap
00:12:43
Speaker
And coming from consulting, the work-life balance seemed to be amazing because it's a normal job in a bank and it is
00:12:49
Speaker
not as challenging as the consulting one in terms of work hours. So if I have to summarize in one line, it was very comfortable job, very cushy job, paying really well, and not much of a work life pressure.
00:13:05
Speaker
and so I had basically had a mentor there who named SV Venkataraman and whom I used to call Venki and he was the chief operating officer there and senior from IIT and I'm Ahmedabad and I basically adored him I still adore him and so he basically told me we used to have a lot of personal conversations so he told me in the age of 35
00:13:35
Speaker
then it is like those orbits right in a atom which basically go around in a nucleus, then you will be stuck in a different orbit.
00:13:44
Speaker
But if you take the risk, then your orbit will change. Otherwise, if you really want to change your direction and make a significant move, then you have to take the risk. And second important thing which he told me in one of the conversations was that
00:14:10
Speaker
Nobody in the world has become wealthy from salary. That's true. Either you need to have some ancestral property or you need some investment of yours to do amazingly well or it would be some ESOP or your company's own shares which are going to catapult you. You can never be serious.
00:14:37
Speaker
So I think these two things... But wealth, beyond a certain level, is just a number, right? Somebody who is a millionaire or like 10 million or 100 million... Well, if 10 million, 100 million is the lifestyle change... You are right, you are right. But I think his main message was that salary... If you are pursuing salary, then also you are pursuing salary for wealth, which is what basically executives do.
00:15:05
Speaker
So you are saying that you are going to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to
00:15:32
Speaker
something needs to be done now enough of passing time and earning good salary and I also started realizing that at this age which is basically 35 years it will start getting the salaries are going to go up and then you end up taking home loans and this loan that loan and then it is like a golden handcuff you can never come out of it once you have a good salary and you build expenses around it it's very difficult to come out of it and I felt that I didn't know how to buy it
00:16:02
Speaker
And then I remember basically going to somebody's office and I think to basically a startup office and I saw that there was a poster there which said and which is a very favorite quote of mine from Mark Zuckerberg, which says that not taking any risk in life is the biggest risk in life.
00:16:24
Speaker
which basically resonated with me, if you are not taking any risk, how did the three of you come together? Was it very clear that the business started and let's discuss ideas or brainstorming about your finalised work or was it already
00:16:41
Speaker
Do you agree with the idea that Bhaki donuts your mind way and then you agreed with it?
NoBroker Genesis & Development
00:16:46
Speaker
So Saurabh is basically my batchmate from Ahmedabad. Same dorm, same floor. And we knew each other for, now we know each other for past what, 18, 19, 20 years.
00:16:58
Speaker
almost. So we knew we knew each other for long. And this no broker dot iron was something which basically he had. And this was the idea which was basically he had mentioned to me long time back. And I thought it was already an entrepreneur that time was already an entrepreneur running some other business. And Akhil was ID junior. And so all so basically when Saurabh and Akhil had started working and they
00:17:27
Speaker
then basically one person had to lose, had to basically leave the job and do it full-time. So I said, I will leave my job and I'm going to basically do it full-time. I will take some risk for calculating the risk. So then I lost my job. And what thesis do you have? I guess magic bricks are already accepted. What was the thesis?
00:17:54
Speaker
When housing.com came, we were very impressed with housing.com. Amazing founder, amazing product. We really loved that idea.
00:18:10
Speaker
But the problem as a customer, what started happening was that whenever we used to look for a house for our own needs, we felt that Samnit only broker here, because if on every side, the guy who's posting the properties are broker. And even if it says posted by owners, actually, there's a broker who is basically behind that. And because he has posted that property, frankly, the problem that you can connect yourself directly with a tenant or with the owner who do solving you.
00:18:38
Speaker
And by that time, what we had started noticing was that there were many Facebook groups in which the group name said, without broker, and without, flats without broker. And they would all be like city specific, like there would be a good group. Of course, it had limited effectiveness because a broker can also enter and there is no way to, nobody is doing it full time as a moderator and so on. But what we basically started seeing is that people in India wants to connect directly with each other.
00:19:07
Speaker
Our thing was that as a customer, do we want to connect with owner and audit slash tenant directly? The answer was yes. Yes, we want to connect. Okay. But after so many years, do you still feel that this is true, that the broken is negative value add?
00:19:26
Speaker
it will be very unfair to say that the brokers in every broker that you pick on the street they don't add value because and especially this we have worked with many south Bombay brokers and unfortunately all the VCs live in south Bombay so they have a very positive question about brokers
00:19:45
Speaker
So they have seen that say a South Bombay VC will come in a SUV, he will himself be well educated and he would have been working with that family for decades and he would generally think it was good for that family and he wouldn't want to just close the deal and get some money because he is thinking about long term.
00:20:03
Speaker
But the company of the brokers, which you basically see on the street, they are doing it because they have a couple of phone numbers with them and they have a small shop. They are also doing some other business, but they will have some choteau sitting in the shop and when you come, the choteau will give a phone call and the broker will come running.
00:20:20
Speaker
And the objective of these guys is basically to make quick buck. There is no exam, there is no certification, there is no comfortability, everything is in cash.
00:20:38
Speaker
So just that lack of information is what they are getting paid for. Absolutely. So when I came to Bangalore first, of course the broker in his conversation will ask very gently, and you didn't realize that you are giving a very important piece of information. The moment he comes to know that you are not from the city, he is going to show you the worst inventory first.
00:21:01
Speaker
I remember going and seeing a green color painted small house on the roof. Room in fact. And saying...
00:21:14
Speaker
So, because whatever inventory is not moving, in those cases, the owner is more than happy to pay him a higher cut. He will try to push towards that. Once he knows that you are not going to take it, and once you basically reward, then he will show the remaining properties that he has. Okay. So, you started this as a listing platform like the other platforms that time, like Magic Bricks and 99 Acres, that you list your property with one difference that brokers cannot list. That was the original thesis.
00:21:41
Speaker
Correct. So the original thesis was, and we also basically then invented an algorithm, which keep it very secret, in which what we basically do is that the algorithm catches you, whether you are broke or not.
00:21:57
Speaker
immediately after you register and within couple of seconds it goes through lots of parameters and basically immediately says that whether you are a broker or not and if there is a doubt that this guy can be genuine or can be broker we are okay
00:22:12
Speaker
Two are on the side of caution and mark that person as a broker. Can you like share some like maybe not the nuts and bolts but how do you catch that somebody is a broker? I think see what happens is that a broker typically wants to advertise himself to everybody in the world and hence there are a lot of digital footprints that a broker leaves.
00:22:35
Speaker
for the algorithm does is that it basically gathers those data footprint then the probability score whether these guys are broke or not and based on that probability score we will take a decision.
00:22:47
Speaker
So when we started the, it was a listing platform, but then also we also faced a huge amount of challenges from VCs, which I will discuss. Well, Abhi, like initially Solange Kiaoga without VC Manina, you must have done some amount of bootstrapping.
00:23:08
Speaker
How did you start spending on paid ads right from day one? How did you initially get enough listing for reaching to some level?
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah, the objective was to basically, so we launched it and then basically owners, tenants, buyers, sellers. Initially, it was only a rental platform, so the owners and tenants basically started coming in. But how did you get them in? Like, who would drive basic air traffic?
00:23:40
Speaker
When we were bootstrapping, we basically put in our own money and we basically then we did Google advertisement, we did Facebook advertisement and a lot of initial adopters which basically came and of course, so it basically started building gradually. So I think I would say that from March 14 to December 14, in this 9-10 months, it was building gradually.
00:24:09
Speaker
Because it's very difficult, unless you have a good amount of money for marketing, then the pace of growth will be small. But thankfully, the pace of growth was good enough to show that this has a huge amount of potential. The problem was, of course, that nobody in the world had done it at such a large scale. So the question was that, the question which VCs used to basically ask us is, what did the US make?
00:24:40
Speaker
And many of them still ask, can you basically find a parallel in the US or can you find a parallel in China? When did this conversation start, like December may have started? So I think after launching in March, April itself, and that's what basically advise many fellow entrepreneurs, it is a good idea to start talking to VCs, start talking to VCs.
00:25:00
Speaker
Some of those VCs who are your friends or ex-batchmates or ex-colleagues, what is it that VCs are thinking about from which angle? Are you totally doing something which they will not like or not appreciate or there's a big red flag in their mind? What is it? So I think we start that conversation early. So I think the two big red flags
00:25:29
Speaker
were first was that it has not been done anywhere in the world. So, if this is such an obvious idea and such a good idea that people want to remove broker, then why isn't there a company? And the problem number two was that broker is always paid after the work is done.
00:25:48
Speaker
by the customer. And second, it is much more easier to collect money from the broker because many of these platforms have thousands of people on the ground. Every city has hundreds of people who are on the ground and who go and collect cash.
00:26:11
Speaker
And your model for a customer was similar, like a monthly package, like pay for a month to list your house. So R was completely different for a broker because he deals in properties. So for him the package is that, okay, I'm going to post X number of properties in a year and you have to pay so many thousand rupees. But in our case, because neither the owner nor a tenant does it for a living and he has only come to solve a problem. So R packages are for 30 days, 45 days. That's it.
00:26:39
Speaker
data package you pay either it's free or you pay couple of thousand rupees that's it and then and then after a month then the package expires and then you can use this later when you come
00:26:50
Speaker
Okay. So it's like a freemium model. When you pay, then you get more inquiries. That would be the difference. Yes. So what basically we said was that we are going to start free and we are going to allow it to post for free and contact for free. And slowly what we are going to do is we are going to say that for premium services, for example,
00:27:10
Speaker
if you want premium filters or if you want your properties to be on the top slot, then we are going to have optional paid service. So it's premium. Today also in no broker, you can majority of customer no broker are used for free and we are very happy for that. And because then they tell more people and then more tenants, more workers come, which means the premium package is also then start getting sold. So that was what basically we said earlier.
00:27:38
Speaker
And how many nos did you hear before finally getting your first check?
Funding & Growth
00:27:43
Speaker
I think we must have heard very easily 20 nos, if not more. I am not saying over email, I am saying over face-to-face meeting. What kind of VCs were they like?
00:27:57
Speaker
So I think these were all VCs across India, India based, India born and VCs were basically global and had an India office. So we tried everything, whatever we could. We wrote a lot of cold call emails. We contacted our friends who connected us to someone else. So we tried all techniques.
00:28:22
Speaker
So how did the first check happen then? And how much was it? Yeah, so the first check was for $3 million, which was around 18 currents in that point of time. And this was in the end of 2014, so after some 9, 10 months of us bootstrapping. And this was Saif Partners, which is now known as Elevation.
00:28:45
Speaker
And so at that point of time, if you remember, housing.com had got a massive funding in late outback funding and that also some $90 million, which even today is a massive amount. And unless some unfortunate things happen, otherwise the founder was great and the company was good and they were
00:29:05
Speaker
doing great. So it was obvious for the investors to question that now that another company has basically got so much of funding, so how will you be able to basically scale. But we were in our own world. I remember that, but then the additional questions started coming in that what if other portals basically start copying you?
00:29:33
Speaker
But I think finally what worked with Elevation and we have a huge respect for Saab's elevation is that I think they are
00:29:53
Speaker
very grounded people and they basically felt that, yes, as a customer, saving brokerage and paying brokerage is generally a pain point. And of course, it's the information asymmetry, information arbitrage that they are using. And I think they took a bet also on the team, on me, Akhil and Saurabh, saying that, so anyway, hot data in the early start, but whatever signs were good, we started them.
00:30:24
Speaker
Okay. So typically, like, you know, in those early days, what kind of success rate did people have? Like if someone bought a package, what was the probability? In the start or today? In the start. So in the start, what we basically start when we started our, we did not
00:30:50
Speaker
push the premium packages too much on the site. It was almost hidden. And the objective was that only people who are really interested will basically pay us. And the surprising thing was, I still remember, we had launched it. So our investors also said that we had paid packages to launch. Now it is time for people to upload.
00:31:11
Speaker
First get the network effect. But we had this fear that we have seen in real estate in the past that there have been companies which have become very big in terms of number of customers, number of users, but they have never been able to figure out how to monetize. And our learning is that it's very difficult to take one rupee from customer.
00:31:36
Speaker
The journey from 0 to 1, I'm saying even for this forecast, 0 is easy. 1 is very difficult. But from 1 to 1000 is surprisingly very easy. Because once you start paying, then it is very easy to say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees, 1000 rupees, because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees, 1000 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you say, okay, I'll pay 100 rupees because then you
00:31:56
Speaker
So when we realized it, we don't want to be, we said that, see, we are not those youngsters who are okay to get VC money and spend it and have some many couple of years. We are in our thing. This is a big career option, a change for us. And we won't do it only when it makes sense. It'll really make money. And even today our North Pole is always revenue. So the entire company is
00:32:21
Speaker
So if you come to Novorokar, people talk only about two things, customer service and revenue. So revenue is super important. So we said, if you have a paid package, launch it. And then let's see what happens. So I remember, Aamish Sharma in our team, he launched it in the night. He launched it in the night.
00:32:43
Speaker
And by the morning somebody had paid. All thought was gone behind as to how much we should charge and what we should say. But no effort was gone in terms of how to service him because we never, somebody will pay so quickly. And then of course somebody paid and we figured out how do we service, how do we
00:33:09
Speaker
Make sure he gets the house. So then slowly he's and gradually basically kept on building. What was the first city you lost? So we started with Bangalore and Bombay.
00:33:20
Speaker
Because this had like young, urban, tech-savvy population. Yeah, also because Mia Kelinsara, we used to live in these two cities. So it was also part of the reason that we went to these cities. And then after a year or so, then we launched Poona, then Chennai. So these were the four cities. And even today, a good amount of our revenue comes from these four cities.
00:33:45
Speaker
and NCR and Hetlerot have been launched recently one and a half year back. How comes NCR was so low down in your priority list? I mean NCR is a huge market. Correct. So our thought process always has been and this is a very major differentiation from e-commerce platform and I think this is one of the reasons why
00:34:09
Speaker
we have been a little sane in terms of spending etc and respecting VC money is because we feel that in this business you don't care as a customer. I'm saying Akshay doesn't care whether we founders are from ITIM. As long as you get your the house that are looking for a 2BHK in Bandra today at this price.
00:34:34
Speaker
You don't care whether these guys have raised $150 million funding or whatever. You don't care at all. The only thing that you care about is, will I get a house on this street, for this BHK, for this price today or not? If you don't get it in the next few days, side is useless for you. Similarly as an owner, if you don't get a tenant or a buyer within X number of days, the side is useless for you. You don't care. So we possibly find that the most important thing is that you should first of all make those customers happy.
00:35:03
Speaker
and let the network play in the cities that you are in before you start moving to the new cities. So this was one of the very important decisions that we took that we are going to copy because it's very good to expand lots of cities. Your friends will call and they'll say, yeah, we saw billboard in Delhi. We saw this.
00:35:31
Speaker
That's a big ego boost when your friends call you and they say they are here. But any customer, what do you want? Because you basically then spread yourself thin, you are into so many cities but network effect isn't getting built up in those cities and customers are unhappy.
00:35:53
Speaker
So, we said that we are not going to chase what looks good. Even many of the VCs told us that you should quickly expand because that's the power of technology. So, we only have an office in Bangalore. So, we can expand to any city without having a physical office. But our goal was very simple that no customer comes first. We can't just keep on expanding because it looks cool and looks good or because e-commerce companies are doing it. So, it was slow and steady and we continue to do that.
00:36:21
Speaker
So when you open a new city, what does it take? Like, as you said, you know, network effect is super important. So, you know, how do you ensure a new network effect? Okay, they're like a ticking clock. Now, the moment you announce that, say, Pune is open, you know. Yeah. So what we basically do is that first of all, we, we open it for owners. So on a platform, when you are posting a property, then it will, then a new city will start showing up.
00:36:49
Speaker
When a news starts showing up, then people start posting the property and once you have 10 days which have been passed and many properties have come up, then what we do is then we open it for tenants.
00:37:00
Speaker
So then they start interacting with them. And then we basically say the city has been launched. But how do the owners come? So we start advertising in those cities. So the first step is that you allow it for owners to post. Parallel step is that you activate marketing activities online, offline in that city so that awareness builds up. And then after 10 days, once there are some number of properties, then you open it for everybody. And then the network effect starts kicking in.
00:37:29
Speaker
But is there a shortcut to quickly make a city successful? No, there is no shortcut. Because property posting, property selling is a very, I would say intimate affair for a customer. It's a very important decision for the customer in which house he's going to live, at what price he's going to sell his house. So people don't change their existing way of life so easily.
00:37:58
Speaker
The great thing is that once they do, it's very difficult to them take them away. So to just stop all the marketing of no broker, still for no broker to reach zero customers, it is going to take five years.
00:38:13
Speaker
But they will still keep on coming and checking no broker and posting something because they did it one year back or two years back. So platform has a very strong stickiness. But yes, we were happy about it because there is no cashback scheme which can basically win over a city quickly.
00:38:34
Speaker
And hence, for somebody to displace us, it's going to take many years. Even if you are very good, you can't just buy your way into becoming a large platform, especially on real estate.
Monetization Strategies
00:38:45
Speaker
Did you start by monetizing only the owners of the property? And is it still the same? How do you monetize? So basically, so monetization has multiple angles. One is for real estate. So real estate, what we say is that default is free.
00:39:02
Speaker
because still in terms of the market share, we have 80-85% of online market share, which basically means if there are 10 properties which owners post, we will have eight of them. But on an overall basis, which is the right metric to look at in terms of online plus offline owners, we barely have 10-15% market share in the country.
00:39:27
Speaker
which means that if you look outside our window, if you can see houses were for rental, one or half of them have come to us. So there's a huge opportunity to grow and huge opportunity to make this network felt bigger. So we say everything is free, but for prim services, you don't want to get disturbed. You want your phone number to be private. You want us to coordinate with your
00:39:50
Speaker
These are all for owners. Mostly your monetizing is through owners. No, no. So we started first with tenants. We said that so many options are free. You can contact so many owners, X number of owners for free, a very high number. And then we said, OK, if you want more choices, then you pay. Or if you want some premium filters to search properties, which is going to make it much more easier for you, then you can pay. So we started with charging the tenants. But sales are kept very, very liberal.
00:40:19
Speaker
Then owners, then we started. And what did you charge? We launched the first plan for triple nine rupees. So very easy. Even today, the price is 1,500 rupees. And even the most expensive one which goes is for 4-5,000 rupees in tenants. That's it. Allow majority of the tenants to use it for free. And if you want to use it for free, you're most welcome. And even if you are willing to pay, we won't charge you more than a couple of thousand rupees.
00:40:47
Speaker
So still, whatever we charge on no broker is, I think, one sixth of the brokerage. So very, very, very inexpensive, very, very in budget. And the reason is that we don't have people on the ground. We don't everything through technology. So we don't need to charge so much money. And you want to basically pass on all the same to the customer. So this is the thing that we started with.
00:41:14
Speaker
But then, luckily, what has also happened is we have discovered that the fundamental difference between us and any other real estate platform is that genuine customers are doing genuine deals on our platform. So Kukar is not taking those customers away from the platform. So mostly on the platform, we are doing deals. And now those customers are asking us, why do you want to work on painting with Kukar?
00:41:45
Speaker
And for us, the kicker here is that for us, the cost of acquisition of these customers, incremental cost is zero. These customers, we have cost for us. So the incremental cost is zero.
00:42:03
Speaker
And hence, as long as we are able to provide good services, the customer is most happy. So then our second and third thing which started happening was that for financial services, which is rent payment, home insurance, and backers and movers insurance, and home loan, for all of these services, we started offering financial services.
00:42:26
Speaker
We are also, we are now very big in Packers movers, we are very big in painting and cleaning. In fact, we are India's largest aggregator for Packers and movers. So then we started basically expanding into these categories because the customers are asking us and we realize that the customer is free for us. So the question is, can I give you good service? So otherwise, you will go to Google, you will try to search somebody.
00:42:53
Speaker
you will call a friend of yours. So you have no idea, right? You are just basically in the dark and you are realising on some anecdotal evidence. But there is an institutional player to whom you can say, I know I have your phone number, I have your email address and I will catch you. So that is the responsibility that we said that we will take.
00:43:15
Speaker
So from the core real estate, then we expanded into financial services and services. So that's how the product journey went. What is this rent payment feature? The rent payment feature basically says that you can use credit card to pay rent. So for 100 rupees of rent, we are going to charge you 1 rupees extra because you are using the rent form.
00:43:38
Speaker
good portion of that one rupee will be taken by the banks and the credit card issue company from us. But against paying this one rupee, because you are using 101 rupees on the credit card, you will get a lot of reward points. You will also get a credit reward of 45 days in which you can pay which many customers. This is also a pretty popular product that we have.
00:44:03
Speaker
But the owner will need to agree to this or you... No, owner just gets the money. Owner need not even know about it. Okay. Got it. So, largely your monetization is of the tenant or the buyer instead of owner. Yeah, that was something which we started with. But now it is 50-50. So, 50 percentage is tenant and buyers and 50 percentage is owners and sellers. So, I think both the parties because what we have discovered is that on the time money value curve,
00:44:33
Speaker
Once you are younger, once you are a bachelor, you are a young family, you are okay to spend time and just save money. So these people generate a lot of liquidity in the system. They come, they use the platform a lot. But once you start valuing your time, then you start taking the paid plans. Because then you want to save that one hour of your day searching through the plan. You want some help, the product can give. So then you want a pop-up which comes to you as soon as a matching property appears on no broker.
00:45:01
Speaker
Otherwise, as a bachelor, most probably you're okay. We'll go to the site every day and figuring out whether a new property has come. But once you are okay to pay 1000 rupees and use a TKR property, then I know a new property isn't posted. I'll contact that also. So that's how basically it's happening.
00:45:19
Speaker
What are the packages for owners? How do you monetize them? For owners, the package is that you basically, you pay us couple of thousand rupees, which is again the faces to 3000 rupees. And then what we'll do, we'll put your property on the top slot, which basically means that a lot of customer calls will come to you. And you'll have a phone relationship manager and this phone relationship manager will pick up the phone call on your behalf.
00:45:42
Speaker
and will read the details of the properties and then over phone he will fix up your meeting with your assistant tenant and you can go and visit him. But our guy will not come out of the office. So he is not going to accompany you. He is not going to physically be there. But he will give you some bit of convenience which you want. Scheduling, he'll take care of basically. Scheduling and fielding the first call. Okay. Got it. Okay. Okay. Okay.
00:46:10
Speaker
Okay and so this the movers and packers and these kind of services which you are aggregating what is your earning in that like how much of like if a customer spends 100 rupees in that how much do you earn from that? So for different different services the margin vary from say 15-20 percentage to 30-35 percentage they vary across and the main reason is that because our job is to curate these vendors
00:46:37
Speaker
is to basically find out the ones who are good, who have good intentions, who believe in customer service and who are going to uphold our brand value.
00:46:45
Speaker
And on the partner side, the objective is that, hey, can I have a dedicated truck only for no broker? Because no broker won't give me much of business. So I think it's just like Uber and Ola that earlier exit driver thought that, OK, I will work for Uber also, then I will take some private trips also. But the moment Uber started giving them so many trips, that they didn't want to basically go somewhere else. Otherwise, you remember the start, they used to give you our phone number, our phone number.
00:47:16
Speaker
When the business increased, then there was no need to do it. So same thing with us. So can we give so much business to our vendor partners that they don't need to look anywhere else and they can have dedicated staff? And that is the stage that we have come in. Because the platform is very large. So just to basically give up, we don't reveal the revenue number. But in terms of the customers, I must tell you that when we started, we used to barely add 1,000 customers in a month.
00:47:45
Speaker
Today after 6-7 years later we add more than 4 lakh new customers per month.
00:47:54
Speaker
And so which means basically that we add half a crore new customer per year. And our cumulative customer base is 1.5 crores. So whatever we did, not only 1.5 crore is a decently large number, but the pace at which we are growing basically means that half a crore will add this year, which means whatever we did in seven years, one third of that we are doing now in every year. Yeah.
00:48:23
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. And so, you know, this moving and packing painting, it sounds very high risk because it is again, very intimate. So the customer is going to be like, so how do you control quality there and ensure a good experience for the customer?
00:48:48
Speaker
Is it worth it to take on so much research? Of course, it's a difficult business. Difficult because it's a manual business, it's a labor intensive business and hence the probability of mistakes are there. But then, just like any other entrepreneur, the quality of entrepreneurs in this field
00:49:07
Speaker
is also some of the very good entrepreneurs are there in this field. People who have, who look like a small moment shop, who have couple of drugs, or who have couple of painting labors, but they will give their best to ensure that customer is always first and customer is happy.
00:49:25
Speaker
And I have met those partners and the long term is very clear in their mind. So of course like every other industry, these industries also have very short term players whose objective is to keep a lot of work in the market.
00:49:38
Speaker
But there are also players who are very committed, who think long term. And the objective is to curate those players' customer service ratings, then curate them, then motivate them, hire business, and encourage them. So the objective is because if there are movements that you can't do, if there are movements that you can't do,
00:49:58
Speaker
So, is it an easy job? No, it is not an easy job. But finally, you want that person. In fact, I changed my house, so I used no broker. And so I have seen that experience very closely. And if the labors are good, if the intention of the entrepreneur is good, then there is a very high probability that the movement will be smooth.
00:50:18
Speaker
And customers also understand. So they also support. So what stops you from actually going out and acquiring a mover and packer company? Like there are a few big players you could acquire one of them and do this as you know like the way say
00:50:36
Speaker
parmese acquiring a path labs you know so like you know is that something which you think you will do no and the reason is that we want to basically play on our strengths
00:50:49
Speaker
Our strength is the thought process of technology, our strength is the thought process of product. Getting those customers who are using our platform and giving and tying up with and basically getting them and doing their work. Our strength is also in curating the vendor partners' strength in terms of assessing what customer is saying.
00:51:09
Speaker
Our strength does not lie in managing drugs, managing labor and basically physically loading the goods. That is not our strength. So people who are good at it, we are very happy to work with them because they are good at that, they are good here and I don't think basically being too greedy for that extra 10 percentage margin required because then we will not be playing on our strengths and it will inordinately take huge amount of bandwidth for us also.
00:51:39
Speaker
Okay. Got it. Although, I mean, you know, if I was to ask a similar question to like, say, a tech company, which is acquiring offline players, you know, probably the I mean, they also have initial strength in technology. But then, you know, money gives you the bandwidth to do all of these things. And by doing these acquisitions, your valuation goes up, you're able to get more funds and
00:52:07
Speaker
You know, so whether that could be a path. So might be. So I think the current thought process, I told you, perhaps things might change. Okay. Okay.
00:52:21
Speaker
And tell me about the funding journey. So that first three million cheque, Uskebab, how did that... So that first three million cheque happened and we were very, very frugal. So in fact, that third million cheque was divided into one million and two million. And we were so frugal with that one million.
00:52:40
Speaker
and that the investor came and gave us that remaining two million immediately. That's in the beginning. Just give them the money that was there on our board. He basically quickly arranged to make sure that we get the two million. But we still continue to be frugal. So we are very proud in saying that we are as frugal as you can be even today at this stage. So that was the initial funding.
00:53:09
Speaker
So, earlier we were struggling to get funding because other players got huge amount of funding. And after that, because one of the big platforms imploded, then everybody started saying no to us because the sector is not doing well.
00:53:31
Speaker
And people start saying, what's the problem in the sector? Because lot of people lost money because of that saga. So people start saying, whenever we met any Indian investor, they said, we are negative on real estate as a sector.
00:53:46
Speaker
And even today, when you will ask, what is the problem? And we are like, I don't know, what is the problem? You can ask us that. We can't basically know the entire thing. So after that, BNEX came, which was a very small investor at that point of time. Now they are coming.
00:54:13
Speaker
But to say in short, I would say it is fair to say that for the next four or five years, we did not get much bahab from the VCs.
00:54:26
Speaker
okay so when did that so so what i mean to say for those four five years is that of course we needed funds so what we did was that that teru from b next we hugely respect him i think we'll jump up the building if you allow if we just ask us to so we have that much respect with us so he has he has basically blindly trusted us so that has happened and
00:54:52
Speaker
So for the next four years, what he did was, of course, I have partners continue to put whatever they could. And what B-Next did was that he helped us to find investors in Japan, in Singapore. He somehow found a investor in South Korea. So basically, we just toiled here and there and found whatever one million, half million, we could find somebody and everybody to survive for the next four or five years.
00:55:20
Speaker
So next five years was just basically put your head down and just do the work that you can in as proven manner as you can. And we did the same thing that we used to do earlier. And I think four or five years back when we again started for funding at that point of time, I think our numbers basically started becoming decent in the eyes of the VCs. So basically they started feeling
00:55:43
Speaker
that we are the largest in the country. So we are the largest in the country in real estate. So we are category leader. I think it changed the earlier question when it changed was when General Atlantic invested in us in middle of 2019. Yeah, so I think then. How much did they invest? So they invested $50 million at that point of time. Yeah.
00:56:10
Speaker
So I think then after that, then we basically got some bit of attention. And then there was a chance meeting with Tiger Global just a couple of months back, a couple of months later than GA. And then they invested some $30 million that amount of time. And then in October 2019, and then four or five months later, then General Atlantic did a follow-up round of another
00:56:40
Speaker
another 30 million. So I think GA was 50, Tiger was again 50, and then GA was 30 million. So then in a span of I think eight, 10 months, we were able to raise a decent amount of funds. You raised like maybe something like a hundred, maybe not hundred, but 50 types of what you raised. The first five years we raised $20 million and then we raised $13 million.
00:57:13
Speaker
During the lockdown, people started going back to their hometown. So that core market which you had of young professionals who come to metros for a job and rent, that must have got a hit. Of course, that market did get a hit.
00:57:31
Speaker
But the good thing was that the people who also shifted to their hometowns belong more to the segment of young bachelors and young families. People who have their entire furniture here, where their kids go to school, they went for a couple of months, but they did not surrender their house. So the majority of moving with all your luggage happened with people who had less luggage and who were less rooted in the city.
00:58:00
Speaker
Right. So that moment also basically kept on happening here and there and of course you participated in the backup movers journey both ways. So real estate basically saw up and down in proportion to the lockdowns. But thankfully whenever lockdown opened up, the business also jumped up. And one surprise which happened in the past one and a half years was that buy and sell market has done amazingly well. Okay, why is that?
00:58:31
Speaker
It's and even I am surprised because if you had asked me last year in March I would have said that buy and sell is going to have a very difficult time because Allertymon was there then GST was there and now it is there so who's going to buy this but what happened last year and to some extent continues today is that the real estate prices have touched a bottom.
00:58:53
Speaker
okay so it's good i'm appealing for people to buy now if steel and cement prices are going up they buy 10 percentage every year and the you won't increase as a builder you don't increase the price of your house for three years then the house is in a discount of 30 percentage
00:59:09
Speaker
like that basically that trough basically was touched and finally last year was amazing for Bioncell and continues to do so many of our builder partners they have sold all the villas that they had so it was not just affordable houses but even the luxury houses
00:59:30
Speaker
Because thankfully, although the lower middle class was very severely impacted and negatively impacted, the middle class and upper middle class was not impacted. And the jobs did not go. And hence, whatever savings they had was getting completed, they finally found a way. Right, right. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So, you know, when you started NoBroker, that time real estate was like, you know, it was boom time.
00:59:57
Speaker
lot of builders were getting very very big and I think Dhoni used to come in front page ads of some builders here in Delhi and Seattle. So tell me about the industry's journey since then till where it is now. So actually what has also happened is that we as a platform because we connect both the parties together so we are very strong in we sale.
Market Position & Future Ambitions
01:00:20
Speaker
But in India, when you think about buy and sell, many people think about the builder properties, but actually equally large market is in the resale market where people buy, we already ready to move in properties. So we are used to that. And that journey has been pretty consistent and has picked up more base in the past from here, but that has been consistent.
01:00:41
Speaker
And yes, we are right that in terms of the builder properties, it has seen up and then it has seen down. Unfortunately, customer is the one who basically gets trapped in many of the uncompleted construction projects. So even now, when we partnered with any builder, we are very cautious. We don't want to open with anybody who will give us more fees, but has a shorty past. So we type builders with a good record. And we are very large in buy and sell. So we are largest in the country in resale properties.
01:01:09
Speaker
So, what is the ambition for no-broker? Like, what is your ambition for no-broker? What do you want to see it as in, let's say, like a five-year span?
01:01:20
Speaker
So see, what we are very happy with is that we are increasing in terms of customer size, we are monetizing, we continue to have our roots in some bit of frugality. So that thing we are happy, we are happy to have a platform which has a business model in place, which has a revenue model in place. I think now basically our ambition and my ambition would be that three years, five years from today, no broker should be a household name.
01:01:48
Speaker
Today, if we go out in the market, people would know what Paytm is, what Ola is, what Google Pay is, what Google Cart is. But not everybody would know what no broker is.
01:01:59
Speaker
So hopefully in the next few years, we will service enough customers and give enough good experience that our name will be in a positive light and across the country. So hoping no broker to be a household name, that's the key ambition. I think everybody else will, everything else will fall into place. Vietnam will come out of it. Do you think this is a winner take all market like this real estate listing and
01:02:28
Speaker
See, to some extent it is. I wouldn't say that two or three large players can't exist. So that is the market is so big that two or three players can surely exist. But can many players exist in the market, everybody being pretty large? That seems to be difficult. So I would say this market would be not monopoly, perhaps, but oligopoly, where a couple of people
01:02:57
Speaker
companies will take a huge percentage because it has a huge network effect in it. I need to keep my house which is the property which will give me highest number of interactions because customer would not take the trouble of going to multiple sites.
01:03:16
Speaker
So we think it has a very high monopolistic nature. It has a tendency of an intake hall. But given the market size of the country and given that we are so low-penetrated online in the country, I think two or three players can coexist. Who are like the major competitors for you? Like in those two or three players, who else do you think will be there?
01:03:38
Speaker
see right now we do not think there is any other player because we think this problem can be solved with no brokerage and every other player who works with broker that may see our competition right now as eventual broker because a broker posting on another platform and then that platform renting it out is still a broker doing it so because the customer has given the job to a broker
01:04:04
Speaker
So for us, if you see right now, for us, when we think about competition, we think about a broker. So in our mind objective is how can I beat broker in terms of convenience, in terms of speed, in terms of transaction cost. So our main philosophy is that we are not saying that you use no broker. You please go ahead and give it to a broker and you please give it to, or you can post it on another platform and you give it to us.
01:04:29
Speaker
Whoever does it fastest and cheapest wins. And we think technology, nobody can beat technology because structurally technology can provide this much, much cheaper, much, much faster than a physical person can ever give. So the objective is to chase this path. Eventually you want to
01:04:56
Speaker
like minimize the importance of brokers in the ecosystem? No, I wouldn't say that. Eventually, our objective is that the cost of doing a transaction in real estate should be pretty low compared to what it is. So today, 5,000 rupees is being charged. We would say the price should be anywhere between 0 to 8,000 rupees. So one third of the broker is something that will charge perhaps in one day, but not more than that.
01:05:25
Speaker
So, we think that either it should be free or it should be one-third of the current brokerage. And the dispute should be much, much faster. For example, we do it 50% of the time that a broker takes. And if the broker is able to do it, great. So, if tomorrow all the brokers in the country unite and they say that we are going to reduce our prices by 67%,
01:05:47
Speaker
Then we are fine. Then go ahead for all our respect. And second thing, if they say that I am going to treat customer as a customer and not as a bundle of cash, which I want to take him away and stop doing, because the moment he shows some interest in the property, a broker would say, what demand is going to go.
01:06:14
Speaker
If the brokers can charge reasonable money and if they can give good customer service, then there is no need for a company like us. I would be happy to go to a broker and do the deal. You are working with entrepreneurs in the moving and packing space or in the house renovation painting space.
01:06:36
Speaker
Then why don't you also work with entrepreneurs in the brokerage space? There would be professionals there also, you know. I mean, this hard stand which you have taken of no broker, which I mean, by default you have to take because that is your branding, but isn't this a limitation? Would you not capture more of the market if you also started empowering the brokers to be more professional, building features for them, tools for them and things like that?
01:07:03
Speaker
But you are right. So, we again want to say that although the word no broker basically makes it feel that we are very against broker, the word no broker says that this platform is without brokers and hence we can deal directly. This platform welcomes that. But there is nothing which stops us to have another platform in which we can work with brokers. So, conceptually we are not against brokers. Conceptually we are against high brokerage.
01:07:30
Speaker
And for all you know, we could have said no broker or we could have said no brokerage.com. But our objective is that we are against high amount of brokerage and if there can be brokers who can work at a reasonable cost, we can of course party with them.
01:07:45
Speaker
But the problem is that in India, brokers are so used to having so much of cash from the customers that they are ready to work at a reduced fees. And second, it was in general, their tendency is to quickly get their money and run out of the scene. That customer service is something which is alien to them. That is not in general the tendency.
01:08:17
Speaker
They are very good at deal closures and that is something, some good practices of that we need to be learned by us. But apart from that, theoretically if there are brokers who come in who say that I will charge less and we'll get some less, we can partner. But isn't there a market which you are leaving out? Like there is a market of somebody who is, let's say, ready to pay 50,000 because it's come monthly rent 50,000 and he's ready to pay 50,000 because it has a free experience the year and maybe
01:08:32
Speaker
They are very good deal closures.
01:08:47
Speaker
So, that market is something which you are like, you know, leaving. But we are not so greedy. It's perfectly okay for brokers to have a market. I am saying even if all the brokers in the country have one-third of the market, still it leaves two-thirds of the market, which is huge. We are building 10% of India's of properties market there.
01:09:12
Speaker
Our agenda is to go from 10% to 70%. And we are perfectly okay if the market, one third market is with brokers. So our objective is not to be greedy and say, if the broker, as I said earlier, if the broker is good, if the customer is happy to pay to a broker, then
01:09:29
Speaker
We don't come into the picture and please go ahead and pay to a business. Why should you? Why should we try to take a business? Because the customer is happy, the service provider is happy. We have no case. Got it. So our case is only, no broker will only appeal to those people.
01:09:50
Speaker
who wants to skip a broker and save money and do it faster. But somebody else who is okay for more number of days because he has enough money and he doesn't care. And he has enough money and for whom that one month of brokerage doesn't matter. We are not the, then that customer is not the ugly customer for us. We are for those people who want to save money and who want it faster.
01:10:19
Speaker
Are you also looking at ways to monetize the data that you are collecting? So for example, you have data around localities, rentals, or sale purchase prices of each of those localities, or how much a locality is in demand, or things like that. So there is a fairly large data set which you would have collected over the last X number of years. So is there a way to monetize that data?
01:10:50
Speaker
Now, of course, there's a play to monetize that data, but we have decided not to monetize it through external means. We will monetize it internally. So what I mean to say, let me explain. One is that we are the only platform in the country who knows that at what price has a deal happened. Because on the other platform, broker takes it away. So the platform has no idea. But on our platform, we know what price the deal has happened. Connect directly.
01:11:17
Speaker
And if you do connect R&D, but based upon the edits which the owner is doing, you know the edit that is done. Second, we do rental agreement so we know what price is being mentioned in the rental agreement. We know that. So we have what we have done is instead of we have made this data public.
01:11:33
Speaker
So if you go to any property or no broker, there is a concept called entomometer where it shows that your property rent range should be in this range. And whether the owner you are being too greedy or you are paying too much money on the table. So that data only we have in India and we are making public. So instead of monetizing it, we are using it to make customer life easier for him to decide better.
01:11:57
Speaker
Similarly, what we have done is only we have the data because we know that when, that broker says this property is very hot, but many times it is not hot. So what we have done is we have made public. So on every property, if you click, you will see how many consumers are seeing the property right now, how many have taken the contact in the past, how many views in the past, everything is public. So you know whether this is really a hot property and you need to add quickly or you can wait.
01:12:25
Speaker
Third is that a lot of data is being generated in terms of whether you have done the action and you are available for home services or financial services.
01:12:35
Speaker
So instead of selling this data and inconveniencing customers, we are using the data for our own use and for which is the best product which the customer can have. So if you're buying a property, then instead of selling your phone number to all the banks, and then they will call you and make your life hell. And then you will let them to no broker. What we'll do is we will take, based on your background and based on whatever offers are there in the banks, we'll send you the best offer which is there.
01:13:05
Speaker
And then if you walk through us, walk through us, otherwise it's okay. So we have realized that selling data doesn't, we don't need to sell data because one, it makes customers unhappy. And it's a short term gain of revenue but a long term loss of customer trust.
01:13:25
Speaker
And second is that whichever main functions we were going to sell, are you also looking at capturing more data? Like for example, Airbnb has that approach where you rate the property.
01:13:41
Speaker
And the property owner also rates the guests. Things like this could be an interesting play, where the landlord is rating the tenant, which then helps the next landlord to decide, stuff like that.
01:14:01
Speaker
No, this is a good idea. And many people have given us this idea. And this is something which we are considering when we should launch. And the idea is that can people rate each other in terms of the properties, in terms of the experiences? Can owners say that this tenant was good to me? Can a tenant say that this property is good? So that's a very good idea. And many people have discussed it with us. This is something which we are considering to launch.
01:14:27
Speaker
Yeah. And you are right that more ideas keep on coming to us in terms of how to use data, how to collect more data and make the plates of advantage. So for example, what we have also done is that we have also launched a no broker would forum where we say that people can talk about the projects.
01:14:44
Speaker
So there's a moderator, and a long time back there used to be Indian Real Estate Forum, IREF. Inspired by that, the objective is that, can people talk about a project? Can they say, can people talk about a project? How small is the information? Technology might not have, but people have. So that is also generating more data. So we keep on getting more and more ideas than we keep on doing it incrementally.
01:15:07
Speaker
And, you know, I was leading one of your interviews at IFL where you talked about a lot of new features that you launched during COVID. Can you tell me what those were like?
01:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, so some of the features which customers liked a lot, one was that we basically started recording videos and what I meant was owners. And owners, because we said, you can't come out in the lockdown and see a property, but many of the apartment societies have a standard. So we said, okay, we have some standard photos of the society and a small video of the property.
01:15:47
Speaker
and amazingly for the first time ever in my life I saw many tenants choosing and paying token money for a property which they have never seen in their life physically which they got a really good idea with the help of a video and their end.
01:16:04
Speaker
was basically one feature which was good and many small small features which will all around more convenience and how you can basically skip physically visiting and make sure that while you are safe you can do the transaction.
01:16:18
Speaker
Tell me about no-brokerhood. Again, in that same interview of yours, I read about that as one of the new features that you launched. What is that about? Sure. So, no-brokerhood is something which we are very excited about. We launched it almost one and a half years back. And the objective is that how can we make sure that while you are an apartment resident,
01:16:42
Speaker
the safety is taken care of and the ease of maintenance bills is taken care of so that was the initial hypothesis so what we do is that the register at the gate entry where the security guards and name enters the name of every visitor that is abolished
01:16:59
Speaker
and it is used by a simple app which is there with the security guard and the same copy of the app is with you. So if suppose you are sitting in your office and some Flipkart courier comes and you want that courier to be allowed or not you can just approve or reject.
01:17:16
Speaker
So any entry, be it a visitor, be it a guest, be it food delivery, anything which comes to your house, through the gate, you have the power to say no to it. And there is no need of intercom calling and so on. You don't even need to talk like that. This is like what my gate also has. So and second one is the ERP piece, which basically what we say is that all the finances of the society will be taken care by us. So be it property tax, be it maintenance bill. So maintenance bill will be generated.
01:17:45
Speaker
through this system and then the resident can pay it using the app. And for this we had acquired a company called Society Connect, early last year, who is a very old company and who had an amazing ERP backend and ERP product which we acquired. So this was the start. Now what has started happening is it has become more like a super app now.
01:18:08
Speaker
So now we are doing everything on this app. So what we are saying is we need to do commerce, you can do it on the app. You have a home cooked food that you want to sell to bachelors in your building, you can do it on the app. You want to offer some drawing classes or some sports classes in your apartment, you can post it on this app. It also acts as a gateway for many D2C brands to come and advertise.
01:18:32
Speaker
So there's a local guy who is selling honey, which is basically pure, or there's a organic vegetable that you are selling, or the local dealer is selling some theater ticket. All of that can be done on the export function of this app, and you can do it. And of course, there are pools, and there are notice boards, and then there are discussion forums, and so on and so forth. And the objective is that because these are genuine customers of no broker fraternity.
01:19:01
Speaker
So we basically capture them, make them a part of no-brokerhood so that they become a permanent customer of no-broker. And this is a different app from no-broker app? Yes.
01:19:13
Speaker
So the no broker hood app is different, installed differently because the features are different and we don't want to be confused. So no broker hood app have a separate, you download it and then you use it. And then you end up using it multiple times in a day. For booking of entities, you want to book appointment and code. This is like a B2B2C kind of a play here.
01:19:36
Speaker
Okay, okay, okay. And this is like a subscription service for the society or the management? Yes, what we do is we say that for a very, very low fees, we allow the the apartment society to take the subscription. And because our once installed and once we have taught this security guard, then the variable cost for us is negligible, right? Because then it's on its own. So we are very happy to give very competitive pricing.
01:20:04
Speaker
and you do that and the objective is that the society should, it should enhance the society's safety and they should be happy consumers for the platform. And who are your competitors in this space? Like one of us is my gate, but besides that? Yeah, and like Bachmata, Abhna complex, all of them are very good players working really well in the industry and we also basically want to get some bit of market share.
01:20:31
Speaker
So they also have the same full-stack thing, like you have a full-stack app in which people can do everything. So these competitors have the same kind of a full-stack app? Yeah, I would like to say that ours is better, but yes. Okay, okay, okay, okay. And like going ahead, how big do you see this business, like the B2B business becoming, like in terms of contribution? I believe we want every apartment society in the country to be on no-brokerhood.
01:21:01
Speaker
That's the goal eventually, that if you're living in an apartment, if you're an apartment resident, you should have no brokerhood. Of course, the journey will take many, many years. But the objective is that. If your society does not have no brokerhood, my question would be, why not? What can we do to deserve being a part of your society, of your life? How can we add value? So objective is that because we want, because the entire thing revolves around real estate, living in an apartment.
01:21:27
Speaker
So very beautifully with our business. Yes, absolutely. But do you see this as a major revenue contributor or this is more of a funnel which gives more users to the primary no broker app?
01:21:43
Speaker
I think both things will happen. It will perhaps start by giving more users to no broker. But as the amount of traction that we are seeing on the platform, from the D2C brands and from the engagement of the customers, we think it will be both.
01:21:59
Speaker
It will also be a new contributor to NoBroker and also a funnel to give NoBroker. But for this, you would definitely need an offline team, like an offline sales team, which will go out and... Yeah, so for this, we have an offline team, which goes... And how did you manage this team when everyone went remote? So surprisingly, it happened...
01:22:24
Speaker
much better than I had hoped for. Our technology team stepped in and they basically modified our system so that the same people could access it and work it smoothly from home. And of course, there are some practical challenges in terms of electricity or internet connection which happens in the smaller towns. But I think the team has stood up to the task and
01:22:47
Speaker
handle the past one and a half years, I don't think I've heard any complaint from any customer saying that we face trouble because you guys are physically not there and customers have also made no understanding. So we are able to handle this change and hopefully now we are hoping that we'll be back. So this is one thing I want to ask you, like there are a lot of founders who are super bullish on the remote future, you know, like say the Zoho founder who says that he wants his people to go back to their villages and work from theirs, you know,
01:23:17
Speaker
But you want people to come back and work from the office. So, you know, what is the thinking behind that?
01:23:27
Speaker
So I think the context is different. So if the context is more of B2B, like a Google, then perhaps it makes sense that you are sitting at home and you are working because that's how the business is. For us, where we are often multiple products, multiple services, where we need to better ourselves every day.
01:23:47
Speaker
Here in this sort of business, it's very important, a startup which has not reached, we are still in the one, we did the zero to one journey and perhaps we have done the one journey. Now we need to do 10 to 100 journey, we are not at 100 right now.
01:24:02
Speaker
This in this stage, a lot of ideation needs to happen. A lot of chance encounters need to happen, which come up with more ideas, more innovations. And we don't want our field staff and our team to feel that they are just sitting at home selling their time and earning money.
01:24:20
Speaker
There is a lot of osmosis-based learning which happens when you are in a physical inner office, when you learn from people who are better than you. So, yes, it's a blessing that we have been able to run our business smoothly in the past one and a half years, but overdoing it has a long-term negative impact. For business like us, for a B2C business, we still have so much to do and so much to learn and so much to ideate, so much to experiment.
01:24:54
Speaker
Got it. Cool. And, you know, my last question to you. So how soon do you think you will hit the unicorn valuation? I think that depends on our interest. Our job is to basically keep on improving every day, little bit, little bit, one percentage improvement every day. So we are doing our job and hopefully we will hit the milestones that are required for companies for their growth.
01:25:14
Speaker
I would personally want people to come and learn from each other.
01:25:21
Speaker
But like, do you see, like, are you actively talking to investors currently for fundraise and all this? No, no, not now, because we raise money just before COVID in March last itself. So we have sufficient money for the next many years. The focus is to keep on building business and making it large, thankfully. But then, you know, what a lot of founders that I've interviewed, their approach has been that if
01:25:48
Speaker
there is money which is available in today's market relatively easily, then better to take it even if you don't need it.
01:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think that approach is also fine, but in our case, we think that we need, we have some of our internal benchmarks and milestones which we have in our minds. We need to reach that revenue X, we need to reach X plus delta and perhaps that is a time when we will feel that now it is a X amount of valuation and then we'll be more confident talking to investors.
01:26:28
Speaker
This episode of Founder Thesis Podcast is brought to you by Long Haul Ventures. Long Haul Ventures is the long haul partner for founders and startups that are building for the long haul. More about them is at www.longhaulventures.com.