The residential tenancy market is dominated by agents who let out the property and take no responsibility thereafter. There is a shortage of service providers who engage with property owners over the long term and provide end-to-end services like finding tenants, maintenance of the property, managing entry/exit of tenants, ad-hoc services such as Property tax payment, Khata transfers, etc. Apart from this, on the co-living side of the business, currently majority of the Paying Guest (PG) accommodations are run unprofessionally and with lower profitability, which again feeds poor service. This huge gap in the real estate market did not go unnoticed by Manish Gupta (Co-founder and Director The three Co-founders, Manish Gupta, Shital Kumar Bhagat, and Senthil Sundaram came together to found Easyleases Technologies Pvt Ltd. to provide property management solutions. They believe that by improving basic hygiene factors, providing additional amenities and utilizing technology, one can not only provide a better experience for the PG guests but also improve the overall profitability of the PG. Manish further asserts, “Co-living space is a 1Bn $ market with a few players operating across India. There is huge potential to tap this market by providing differentiated living at affordable price points.”
rong>) and his partners.Further dwelling into the industry aspects, Manish Gupta answered our questions targeted towards the current real estate market scenario and shared his insights. Here are the excerpts:
Providing High Quality, Managed Living Solutions
Can you elaborate on Easyleases Technologies, and what makes it unique? We felt that there is a significant gap in comprehensiveness, transparency, property owner focus, and execution excellence in the way property management solutions were being delivered. Hence we came together and found Easyleases. Easyleases is a DIPP-recognized, tech-led start-up, in the Property Management Services (PMS) and Residential Leasing Solutions space. We address the gap as an end-to-end PMS provider with a relentless focus in fulfilling property owners’ needs and expectations, whilst providing high quality, managed living spaces for tenants. We commenced our operations in Bangalore in 2018 and have since expanded to Ahmedabad. My partners and I collectively have over 50 years of experience across marketing, technology, sales, finance and management in companies such as Microsoft, Accenture, Karvy Wealth and others.
Residential Sector Positioned For Rapid Growth
Has the residential real estate market experienced any change over the last few years? Yes, after a lull in residential real estate demand during the last few years, the residential market is poised for rapid growth driven by the various government initiatives, rapid urbanization, and rising household income. Each year almost 10 million people are migrating to cities. In addition, there is a multi-fold increase in FDI, REIT and PE investments. Within the residential sector, there is an increasing demand for Property Management Services from individual property owners. The 30 Million-plus strong NRI population has a clear need for a trusted partner to manage their properties back home. Then there are senior citizens unable to manage their properties and senior working executives having limited time and bandwidth to manage their properties. I have also observed an exponential demand for quality PG and Co-living accommodations driven primarily by students and young working professionals. This sector is gaining widespread prominence and has resulted in new rental models.
Act As the Custodians of the Property Entrusted
As a leader in the real estate industry, what are the added responsibilities you deal with? I personally believe that we need to act as custodians of the properties entrusted with us by the respective owners. We need to go that extra mile to take responsibility for the property maintenance, vetting of tenants prior to placement, making sure rent is collected & deposited on-time, anticipating & minimizing vacancies, etc. At the same time, as a Property Manager, we need to ensure the safety and security of the tenants living in the facilities managed by us.
Leading technology initiatives
As a co-founder of the company what are your key roles & responsibilities? As one of the three Co-Founders, I lead the technology initiatives for the company. This includes strategy and roadmap planning, as well as enabling innovation and scale to support the company’s growth aspirations and market demands. As being part of a tech-led start-up, my team needs to stay grounded to make sure we cater to today’s market needs whilst also thinking about our roadmap & innovations – for instance, the Easyleases Tenant App enables tenants to view & make rental payments within the app, raise service requests, extend lease, etc. – without even having to make a call. My other two colleagues drive the company’s Sales and Marketing efforts, while we work closely on the aspects of business development, business strategy, people & growth.
Never compromising on core principles
Can you elaborate on your company culture and how important is it? Transparency & fair business practices are at the core of our company’s DNA. Our intent is to grow rapidly but responsibly, never compromising on our core principles of offering transparent, property owner-focused services and execution excellence. Whatever we do, we want to make sure that it ties up to a customer need or aids in solving a problem that our customers face. To conclude, we are a lean start-up with no layers/hierarchies and we use our resources efficiently.
Enhancing the technology platform to the next level
What are the challenges you are facing and do you plan to overcome them? Currently, our focus is to fiind the right partners and the right talent to help fuel our business growth. We have begun our search for the right partners for equity funding, and expect to close our initial round in the next few quarters. We will be leveraging this to acquire new properties in the co-living space, hire quality talent and enhance our technology platform to the next level.
Strengthen Foundation, Springboard Growth
What are the key milestones you have set for your company for the year 2020? In the current financial year, we witnessed healthy growth in our PMS business in terms of the number of managed properties & rental collections. In addition to this, we also launched new co-living properties. For the next 3-5 years, we have set aggressive growth targets for our business. We will use the year 2020 to strengthen our foundation and as a springboard for growth. Our target is to have 600+ individual properties under PMS and over 3000 co-living beds by the end of 2020.
