Homebuy360, a simple and intuitive product to manage real estate projects, is a Bangalore-based startup founded by ex-Infosys employees Kshitij Minglani & Rajat Kothari. While the current offerings in the market for real-estate CRM are quite expensive and take longer duration to deploy, Homebuy360 makes it absolutely simple for builders and the buyers to track their properties through an easy-to-use web interface. In a telephonic interview, Kshitij explains to us how their product is a game changer for real estate product management.
Homebuy360 is an interesting approach to make buying a house simpler for real estate builders and buyers. How did you guys come upon this idea?
During our tenure at Infosys a lot of our friends and colleagues were buying apartments. The one thing we noticed was that the communication between the builder and the buyer was not quite efficient. Most of the times it involved calling up the concerned person or visiting the builder’s office to follow up on the progress of the project and only about 15-20% of the builders used some project management tools to track their projects. So, we thought why not build a platform to simplify the process of buying a house both for the builder and the buyer. That is when we came upon the idea to build Homebuy360.
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Can you tell us a bit more how HomeBuy360 works?
The major problems with the current solutions available for real estate are
- Complicated,
- Costly and
- Takes around 6-8 months for deployment
We wanted to deliver a product which encompasses all the feature needed, yet being very simple to use. Homebuy360 is a comprehensive tool that includes pretty much every detail that a builder or buyer might want to track. Since our product is web-based, we can customize it quickly based on the builder’s requirements and deliver the product in just 3-4 weeks!
Once the product is deployed, the builder and buyer are provided with login ids. The buyer can track all the details like cash payment, receipts, documents, any customization specified for the house, etc. Similarly the builders can track their marketing efforts, sales leads, documentation, CRM, etc for all ongoing projects through a dashboard. Our aim is to help the builder become efficient, transparent and better understand his financial situation.
What are your expansion plans?
Currently we are concentrating in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai , Pune and Hyderabad and there are plans to expand our operations to Surat and Ahmedabad soon. We are also in touch with CREDAI, so any new policy gets added to the builder’s account soon. Right now, we are working on only residential properties and are planning to venture in commercial properties arena in some time.
On product front we are working on bringing broker community, and home service providers on-board with exclusive login on homebuy360, we firmly believe that once all these actors are on-board, the value proposition and benefit for our clients will increase manifolds.
You have recently launched HomeFind360 – an online classifieds site for buying and renting houses. There are a lot of players in this arena like 99acres, Magic Bricks, Sulekha, etc. How is your product different from the current offerings?
HomeFind360 is not just a classifieds site where you have to go through hundreds of ads to find out at least one or two matching ones. We plan to give users a Google-like simple experience to find what they are looking for. A user can enter a queries like “3 BHK on M G Road”, “Villa close to Airport” or “2 BHK less than 40 L” and our algorithm will automatically find the properties matching the user requirements. We have optimized our algorithm by analyzing how users search online and provide them relevant results. HomeFind360 is still in beta, so stay tuned for more details.
About the founders
Kshitij Minglani (Co-Founder and Director)
Kshitij has held leadership positions in areas such as Corporate Planning, Business Growth Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions. Has successfully lead teams, comprising of different nationalities. Kshitij has worked very closely with the senior management at Infosys. His love for travel and food has taken him places and his passion towards making business ideas work to perfection gives him an adrenaline rush.
Rajat Kothari (Co-Founder and Director)
With more than 11 years of experience in Project Management, Technology Architecture, Cloud Application Development and Maintenance & Support Services, Rajat brings the technology & product management competency to the team. Rajat has worked with several Fortune 100 clients that are leaders in the area of e-commerce and pioneers in web technology innovation.
