Real Estate and Entrepreneurship: Demystifying Property Processes Smart solutions are the need of the hour in the property sector

With today's sector-agnostic entrepreneurship resulting in the advent of innovative solutions, it only becomes natural to check for and apply these models to sectors that are generally offbeat. The best example of such a domain is the Indian real estate segment which is often believed, both by consumers as well as experts, to be widely misunderstood.

Today's entrepreneurs believe that the sector could actually be simplified through technology-driven processes resulting from entrepreneurship. With these, the whole perspective of real estate processes could clearly be communicated to consumers. In this regard, Entrepreneur India interacted with Anjan Rangaraj who is Chief Executive Officer at Chennai-based Catalyst Properties; a property marketing firm which has recently forayed into the big bad world of Bangalore's real estate offerings.

Anjan is also an entrepreneur with over 17 years of experience in the real-estate domain. He believes that technology-driven management of real estate inventory is the need of the hour displaying favourable entrepreneurial aspects:

Presenting inventory to consumers is the right way to go – A potential entrepreneurial opportunity

"I founded Catalyst Properties 11 years ago. I realised that there were a lot of developers who could develop a good product but weren't in a position to present it in the right way to the right kind of audience. So I had to come up with the model that was very different from the big players in this segment," states Rangaraj to Entrepreneur India.

Rangaraj's statement echoes with that of different entrepreneurial experts (in real estate) who believe that startups in the sector should undoubtedly focus on making inventory, that is clean and free of litigation, reachable to the audiences through technology-driven models in marketing or the very way in which inventory management is handled.

Rangaraj adds that it was a technology-driven partly underwriting and partly marketing model that clicked for Catalyst. Here, the wannabe startup owners could consider offering clutter-free consumer-centric models through which both marketing as well as finding property becomes easy.

"Today technology is a must," re-iterates Rangaraj.

Mitigation of issues encountered during critical processes

With automation and futuristic technology viz Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML) presenting a potential opportunity to solve plaguing problems, Entrepreneur India sought to know from Rangaraj as to how application of technology could lead the way for Indian real estate.

Rangaraj believes that the entire marketing process could be digitized. Startups could also come out with customized intelligent solutions for digital marketing so that necessary data is generated and properly evaluated at the initial level itself.

"We have a CRM which is thoroughly worked around what we actually do," informs Rangaraj stressing on the need for smart technology-driven solutions.

Giving rise to new trends

With real estate in India showing clear signs of getting corporatized, going by the CSR initiatives undertaken by major real estate players including Catalyst, there are bound to be new trends which could do more than just ape the west and actually offer consumers extended facilities.

A trend in this regard is that of shared workspaces coming up adjacently with even residential units developed by major companies. Now, this is a sure shot entrepreneurial trend, which could foster the startup founding spirit within people who are also buyers of these residential spaces.

Experts believe that co-workings places alongside residential dwelling units are to encash the startup culture, prevalent in cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Pune and more. Here, a buyer could choose a new residential unit just to ensure that he/she gets to enjoy both dwelling as well as access to premium office spaces at affordable prices whilst starting a new venture within these office spaces. This potentially eliminates the need to actually travel long distances to reach places of work.

"If you have to create a good product you have to create things around it. And only if you have a good product you will be in a position to sell. There are so many things which can actually benefit each other and co-working spaces is one of those things," states Rangaraj categorically.