PropertyGuru sees data analytics and fintech offerings as new sources of growth

Hari Krishnan, CEO of proptech unicorn PropertyGuru, needed to act fast when the pandemic hit. “We told ourselves that these were going to be a tough couple of years,” he told KrAsia.

PropertyGuru CEO Hari Krishnan / Photo credit: PropertyGuru

Founded in 2007, PropertyGuru has grown to become a household name in Southeast Asia’s real estate sector, thanks to its property listing portal that connects buyers, sellers, and agents. The company lists over 2.8 million properties in markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, serving 50 million monthly property seekers and 50,000 active real estate agents.

Like many other companies involved in the real estate business, PropertyGuru was strongly affected by the pandemic in 2020. “The construction sites were shut down. In addition to agents not being able to take clients to visit properties, foreign buyers couldn’t travel freely around either. For example, Chinese buyers own a lot of real estate in Thailand, but none of them could travel,” Krishnan said. In 2020, the company recorded a near 7% decrease in revenues, from US$66.6 million in 2019 to US$61.9 million in 2020.

Asia Pacific’s real estate sector also saw investment volumes drop last year – down 38% year on year (YoY) in Q3 2020 – while cross-border investment logged a 23% YoY decline in the same quarter, according to data from analysis firm Real Capital Analytics (RCA).

Today, the real estate outlook is still uncertain, according to a report by accounting firm PwC, which highlights how the pandemic is preventing potential buyers from traveling abroad to visit properties, while property sellers are refusing to apply discounts to their assets in the hope that the market will rebound as the vaccination campaign will continue.

Krishnan, who joined the company in 2016, did not keep his arms crossed when the pandemic spread throughout Southeast Asia. He decided to leverage technology to tackle some pressing problems, while looking to expand his business with new fintech and cloud services.

In May 2020, PropertyGuru introduced StoryTeller, an app that allows users to visit properties through virtual reality technology. Once a customer is interested in buying, they will be connected to a booking agent as well as a payment gateway that allows the buyer to make a payment for the initial block, Krishnan explained.

Services like StoryTeller are powered by FastKey, an in-house cloud platform that provides real-time data-backed inventory management and support to different administrative tasks such as unit booking, paperwork generation, and deposit collection. According to the company, the software “digitizes and automates the entire property sales process from project launch to close of sale.” The platform has already been used by over 100 property developers in Southeast Asia, said the firm.

Last April, the proptech firm also expanded into home finance, with the launch of PropertyGuru Finance, an online mortgage marketplace that allows users to compare and select loan options with the advice of experts, according to the company. To run this service, PropertyGuru has partnered with major banks in Singapore, including Citibank, UOB, Standard Chartered, and Maybank.

The new platform earns through commissions obtained after mortgage fulfillment and through advertising. So far, PropertyGuru Finance has generated over “a billion Singaporean dollars (US$741.6 million) in the loan book” within a year, according to Krishnan.

PropertyGuru expects to generate up to 96% of revenue in 2021 from its digital marketplaces, while fintech and data services will account for 4% of revenue, according to the company. Last year, the firm logged a US$10.9 million loss, down 62% from US$29 million in 2019.

Becoming a single source of property data

PropertyGuru’s vision goes beyond the property classifieds business. The firm wants to become the leading property data provider in the region.