Interview with Aurum PropTech Ltd

Interview with Aurum PropTech Ltd 

With a coordinated strategy between discovery, fulfilment and data analytics, we aim to enhance consumer experience and increase enterprise efficiency in the real estate sector, asserts Onkar Shetye, Executive Director, Aurum PropTech Ltd. 

What are your company's mission and vision? Can you elucidate your current product offerings? 

Aurum PropTech’s mission is to Revolutionize Real Estate with digital transformation enhancing transparency which will build trust in all steps of the Real Estate Value chain. The vision is to develop an integrated ecosystem for Real Estate on a Tech platform. 

Our PropTech products and solutions are aimed at increasing the efficiency of the enterprise and enhancing the consumer experience. 

Our product offerings are segmented into four clusters: 

• Invest and Finance Data science, analytical tools and platforms to enable smart investment decisions for institutional and retail investors, 

• Enterprise Efficiency Product suites to help increase the efficiency of cost, time and effort in Real Estate Construction, 

• Customer Experience Solutions that leverage technology to engage customer experiences at the touch of a button, 

• Connected Living Tech solutions that enhance lifestyle experience in real estate spaces and asset management products 

These bring in two forms of revenue streams SaaS (Software as a Service) and RaaS (Real Estate as a Service). The detailed product list is attached at the end for reference. 

Aurum PropTech’s consolidated revenue from operations for Q1YF23 came in at Rs 146.4 million, up 78.9% on a QoQ basis. What factors have helped you outperform?

We are in process of creating PropTech ecosystem with a hybrid strategy, organic as well as inorganic growth. The consolidation of revenues from its acquisitions has resulted in increased revenues. We started consolidating one of the newly acquired subsidiaries w.e.f. 16th June 2022, 14 days of revenue from this subsidiary was considered for the first time during Q1YF23.

How are you leveraging technology, automation of processes and the current wave of digital adoption in creating India’s first real estate technology ecosystem?

All our product suites have a three-tier technology layer – discovery, fulfilment and data science.

The discovery layer focuses on utilising tech to help enterprises and individuals list their real estate assets to be offered for sale, rental or investments. It is supported with tools like CRM, Broker aggregation tech for distribution, inventory management dashboard, AR/VR and Metaverse capabilities, Automated Valuation Models etc. For individuals wanting to purchase assets, these platforms enable selection and purchase. It also has post-purchase capabilities for financing, interior design, property management and other value-added services. The platform is laced with demand-side tech tools like loan origination, crowdsourcing of interior design, and facilitation of value-added services in a direct-to-consumer model.

The fulfilment of transactions happens through recommendation engines, transaction gateways, portfolio management dashboards, digital wallets and document management systems. It is also supported by full stack integrated fulfilment centres with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has driven conversational chatbots.

Our data science layer ensures that we track real estate asset behaviour over its lifecycle and consumer behaviour across the purchase and utilisation cycle. It uses proprietary advanced data science tools like SEA (Sentiment Emotion analyser), decision systems, behavioural modelling, geospatial techniques, time series analysis, textual computation, and neural nets for images. Our products utilise blockchain, and artificial and machine learning capabilities to enhance effectiveness.

With a coordinated strategy between discovery, fulfilment and data analytics, we aim to enhance consumer experience and increase enterprise efficiency in the real estate sector.

What are some of the biggest challenges you are currently facing? Also, what are the key risks to your future business growth?

We are keeping a close eye on the macro-economic situation which is evolving by the day. India has been able to relatively shield itself better from inflationary and interest rate pressures and the looming threat of recession in western economies.

These uncertainties may temporarily impact property consumption and investment mindset in India, however, every threat provides opportunities, to deal with changing scenario RE sector will need to adopt technology faster booting prospects for PropTech.

Another challenge we see is in attracting bright and innovative talent to this sector. We wish to see more promising startups and ventures in this space in the coming quarters. We are doing our bit to encourage innovators, entrepreneurs and other talents to join is riding this new wave which is just beginning to swell.

What are your key growth levers?

The short-term macroeconomic scenario is facing several headwinds, India being a large domestic market continues the march of urbanization, infrastructure push, and improving employment and income levels leading to better living standards. This will continue to drive real estate transactions (be it buy-sell or lease) and hence the continued growth of our partner companies. 

Bringing technology to how the property sector is consumed in India will remain our biggest lever of growth as this sector has remained a relative laggard in technology adoption and there is tremendous room for enhancing behaviours and bringing in efficiencies across investing, building, purchasing, renting/leasing and living journeys of various stakeholders and personas.

Further, for us, our ecosystem of such tech-enabled innovations and ventures will propel this transformation even further.