Technology is the solution to a fragmented contractor market

Realty+ through their conversation with Satya Vyas, CEO & Co-Founder, Tornado, learns about the fragmented general contractor market and how Tornado aims to change that using technology. Please talk about the inception of Tornado. The general contractor market is a completely fragmented one with a broken supply and value chain. A lot of middlemen exist in the value chain which leads to cost escalations, poor transparency of prices, delayed timelines and overall poor experience for businesses building small to mid-sized interior and construction projects. Due to the lack of involvement of technology, the industry is also fraught with a lot of inefficiencies & communication delays. Also, what struck us was that the General Contracting market is very large and there is not even a single branded national level player. Thus, we started Tornado in 2016 to be the first tech enabled, national general contracting company focusing on interior and construction projects with faster delivery and cost effectiveness as the core USPs.   What are the Core services provided by Tornado? Tornado is a vertically integrated B2B General Contractor that uses technology to deliver interior and construction projects in relatively shorter turnaround time. The tech engine enables us to understand and predict the variables of input costs, material and time, thus allowing us to provide detailed quotes, economically and faster than other contractors, it also helps track and manage projects efficiently and communicate progress made on job sites, while the back-end office team helps provide support. The tech enablement has increased productivity, timely project execution and transparency resulting in great customer experience.   Highlight the major projects worked on thus far. Some of the major brands that we have successfully delivered projects for are – Radiance Realty’s coworking brand HQ10. The highlight of the project was that we were able to bring down the overall project cost for the client by ~8% over their internal procurement team which executed their initial project. We were also able to deliver the project much faster saving more on rent free period. Lufthansa – Meeting global design specifications, tight timelines and budget constraint, were a few key highlights of the project. Rohde and Schwarz is a long-term client for us. We deliver office improvement and renovation services to them. The critical aspect is to be, always cost effective and execute the project with minimal disruption as this is a live office. NIIT – We have executed several small to mid-sized projects for NIIT with cost effectiveness with tight timelines. They are our long term customer and demand extreme compliance, being a listed company.   Who do you see as your closest competitors? We have introduced an innovative model for the industry. At Tornado we do not focus merely on one aspect of the business but deliver interior and construction projects on time using technology. Although there are many players with different models, we do not have any direct competitors in our space.   Future plans of the company. Currently, the company is operational in three cities – Bangalore, Hyderabad & Chennai, with the headquarters being at Bangalore. We intend to strengthen our bases first in these three cities to emerge as the leading player. We are also evaluating expansion in two more cities this year. We are also heavily investing in the tech part of our business and will be able to release a few critical features this year.