How PropertyGuru built its Google Lens-like feature

The use of visual search in marketing and retail is on the rise, with more than 60% of consumers citing it as the top technology for their digital shopping experience.

Visual search allows consumers to find the items they want through a photo or a real-world object using their phone’s camera. Thanks to artificial intelligence and augmented reality (AR), people don’t have to rely on just text-based search.

Photo credit: PropertyGuru

Recently, online property listing site PropertyGuru launched its own visual search feature called PropertyGuru Lens. Tech in Asia reached out to chief technology officer Manav Kamboj and director for consumer product technology Vivek Kumar to get a glimpse of its inner workings as well as the challenges the team faced and the lessons it learned.

Editor’s note: Answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

What problem is PropertyGuru Lens trying to solve?

Kumar: To activate PropertyGuru Lens, focus your phone’s camera on any residential building and the underlying technology analyzes and interprets the image in your line of sight. It then shows listings of units that are available for purchase or rent.

The concept of “lens” was inspired by several factors:

• Our consumer research revealed that users increasingly see property search as a mobile experience.
• We recognized that cameras are one of the most important features of smartphones today.
• We believe that the future of property discovery must be a visual experience, rather than one involving the keyboard.

Our product rollout has three stages:

1. Activating enough users who are exposed to the feature or product
2. Retaining activated users
3. Scaling the user base or acquiring more users

We are currently optimizing stages one and two for Lens.

Could you break down the component technologies of Lens?

Kamboj: From the time you activate Lens, geolocation data, AI (deep learning), and AR kick in – all in real time. The backbone is PropertyGuru’s proprietary data for properties that are available for sale or rent in Singapore.