Opening the conversation Shajai Jacob- MD & Country Head – ApnaComplex, CEO - GCC, ANAROCK stated a few facts. “Real-estate is the only industry which is still catching-up with tech. There are about 28,000 active technology start-ups but only 18% have the women founders or co-founders in their senior levels and only 15% of the current Unicorn have female founders. At 40% India has the highest number women graduates in the engineering, science & maths stream and 80% of them are working for non -tech companies. In real-estate, women constitute only 14% of the workforce, so that is an alarming trend. Women have the opportunity to drive change, promote diversity and ensure women leadership through the example of their own successes."
Nidhi Srivastava, Co-Founder & CEO - Vibe Realty & Founder - Graviti Dubai concurred that for a very long time real estate has been a male dominated sector but the trends are changing. “A lot of women are entering into the sales segment. They come with a different kind of aggression, understanding and empathy that helps them connect better with the client. Secondly, RERA has made the sector more organized forcing the real estate companies and broking firms to become professional and follow protocols. This has encouraged more women professionals to join this sector.”
Shivani Karia Jhaveri- Co-Founder & CMO, Blox said that personally, the real estate industry had been welcoming to her. “One of the reasons real estate has been male dominated is that most companies started as family businesses headed by men. At workplace one has to be gender agnostic. What the person brings to the organization should define them. Women professionals bring diversity that breeds innovation and with innovation, the company thrives. There has been a drastic shift with more women actively taking up tech jobs and entering real estate and compared to a decade before, there are more tech start-ups launched by women entrepreneurs. There is a long way to go but we are headed in the right direction.”
Priti Thakur, General Manager- Salesforce Initiatives, Oberoi Realty Ltd added, “Gender diversity definitely brings a culture of deliberations, varied perspectives and thereby a degree of agility in an organization. I had been lucky, our organisation per-se has been very open in giving leadership roles to women solely based on capabilities and performance. The sales division is dominated by women in this organisation including top positions and leading the tech department. But, it is also seen that less number of women are inclined to get into a technology field, so change of mind set too is required.”
Kanika Gupta, Founder & COO, Squareyards shared her journey, “I started my entrepreneurial journey as a a mother of two boys in 2014 establishing Squareyards. Being NRI ourselves, I understood the problems of an NRI investor and therefore created this platform that will be more than a normal brokerage firm and will address the problem of NRIs in terms of knowledge about Indian real estate, selecting assets, transaction guidance etc. Today we do everything starting from search and discovery, mortgages and transactions to interiors and property management. We are trying to bring the full stack journey with technology being our enabler.”
LEADING THE WAY
According to Shajai Jacob, funding has been the Holy Grail for almost all tech firms, but Proptech has never seen the levels of funding that Ed-tech seen or Fin-tech have seen. “Proptech being the most stable tech at this point in time, rather than seeing the valuation rise, there is a sluggish investor interest. What’s holding it back in tech could be the lack of great business model or lack of interest by the investors as there is yet to be identified silver lining from the funding perspective.”
Shivani Karia Jhaveri answered, “Investor today is intelligent enough to understand the industry, the market and what problems you are solving and what is your tech and product. As long as you have these parameters in line, the investors are not looking at whether you are from Ed-tech, Fin-tech or Proptech. Like Ed-tech that had many unicorns during boom time and is now experiencing consolidation, in Proptech too companies are folding up either because of the lack of business model or malpractices. When it comes to product & technology, based on what future innovation you are doing and whether you can change the consumer market and behaviour, investors are ready to invest.”
Nidhi Srivastava added, “In our case, there is an investor base, a user base and the broker channel and all of them have different requirements. A tech strategy that can address and create a differentiator for all stakeholders can only help the company take leverage going forward. It is not about how you put tech into acquiring the client but how you maintain an internal organisation which is very tech savvy. And that will bring confidence in the investors as well.”
Priti Thakur stated, “There is definitely a silver lining. When things are new there are a lot opportunities to build things ground up in a specific manner. My transition to real estate, a decade ago, was a shock, coming from telecom that is technology-based sector with sophisticated CRMs completely ready with features for customer service, handling queries etc. From working on paper to complete digitization, it took time for a changeover in getting CRM systems in place but, the transition has been fast in terms of technology adaption. Today real estate is on fast track towards adopting high end technologies from AR/VR to blockchain and that is creating interest among institutional investors as well.”
Kanika Gupta was of the view that Covid was a blessing in disguise for technology sector. “It forced everyone to evolve in terms of tech adoption, fast forwarding what we were eventually doing. Immersive tech is the future and we are at the forefront of the immersive revolution which eventually should happen everywhere as it eliminates all the inefficiencies from the search and discovery process. We have filed around 16 patterns around this area and since we are in Dubai all the developers there are using our platform including digital twin platform for showcasing their projects.”
THIS GENERATION WANTS INSTANT GRATIFICATION, TODAY PEOPLE ARE LOW ON PATIENCE AND IT IS FOR THE MARKETER TO IDENTIFY THE NEEDS OF THE BUYER. THIS IS WHERE AI CAN HELP. SHIVANI KARIA JHAVERI
IN INDIA, THE FOCUS IS ON SALES AND ON TECHNOLOGIES THAT CAN CREATE A DIFFERENTIATION. IN DUBAI IT IS ALL ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN, DATA MINING AND ANALYTICS. INDIAN COMPANIES ARE YET TO REACH THAT LEVEL. NIDHI SRIVASTAVA
USING UNIFIED CRM WHICH IS AN INTEGRATION OF MULTIPLE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS, ERP AND MAIN BILLING SYSTEM, ENSURES THERE ARE NO HUMAN ERRORS AND MINIMUM USAGE OF PAPER DOCUMENTS. PRITI THAKUR
DIVERSITY CAN BRING REAL-ESTATE AND NOT JUST THE COMPANY, SMARTER, MORE AGILE AND FAR MORE NURTURING ECO-SYSTEM THAT IS CONDUCIVE TO TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION AND A CULTURE OF DIALOGUE. SHAJAI JACOB
WE HAVE PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES WORKING TOGETHER AND GENDER DIVERSITY GOES WITHOUT SAYING. OUR MANTRA TO SUCCESS IS TO GIVE THEM FLEXIBILITY AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. KANIKA GUPTA
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