How Proptech Firm Relata Using AI, AR, VR To Solve Real Estate’s Sales Challenges

Proptech space has been growing at a sound pace in India. With the growth of real estate market, proptech firms have been solving many critical problems for both real estate develop-ers and consumers. Relata is one such proptech company, which leverages AI, data analytics, AR/VR and other emerging technologies to enable real estate companies for generating more sales. It also enhances the consumer experience of buyers through its platform, powered through VR. In a conversation with Bizz Buzz, Founder & CEO of Relata, Samudragupta Talukdar said that the company’s tech platform is being adopted by several marquee real es-tate clients across the country. With expansion on radar, the company is planning to raise an-other round of funds within next six months

How did the idea of Relata come up and what was the motivation behind starting this proptech startup?

This was during the pre-Covid period, when we were thinking of doing something in the technology segment. Especially, our focus was to do something interesting with respect to sales. Now any organization who works in this (real estate) ecosystem, they can bring money by three means. The first is through lending that's mortgages, second is you can sell equity. Both of these are liabilities and the third one is more sales. While we were doing some consulting projects, we identified that real estate ecosystem was really struggling with sales. We found out that these problems required solutions. So, we built the tech platform that provides these solutions. To date, we have delivered more than 250 plus projects. We are empowering the real estate developers not only to use the technology, but also to take things up to the next level with respect to what they are doing with respect to marketing and generating leads. We believe that this is a game changing solution for the real estate industry. Our products have received sound response from real estate developers. And we are one of the companies, where in two of the largest banks, HDFC and ICICI have invested. So that's the whole story (so far).

Can you elaborate a bit on the types of solutions the tech platform Relata provide to real estate developers?

It’s a B2B (business to business) platform. Let's consider the whole ecosystem. There are four B's. You have a buyer (first B), whom you are focusing in the real estate ecosystem. Because if buyer buys home, then a builder, broker and banker (other three Bs) make money. So, these are the four Bs. Now today, there is another stakeholder called A, which is an agency. So, you have four Bs and an A. Now you are working in this particular space to first satisfy the buyer.

(Through our exposure), we realised that the customer experience is a problem. From the time of discovery till the time possession, there are two major challenges. One is engagement and exploration and second is real processing and closures. So, we take care of three things. One is customer journey optimization; second is how we can create extended visualization. For example, in real estate, when you buy a product, you get the possession after three or four years. So how do you know how it would look like. Lastly, we bring insights and analytics (for developers), which empower the team to increase the velocity and acceleration to do the sales faster.

How are you leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, AR/VR and others in this platform? Can you provide a view in this aspect?

When a real estate developer launches a new project, it usually advertises the project. After this, sales leads start flowing. These leads are stored in the lead management software. So that's the first place the journey starts. After that, when you open the site, you get the experience centre. Now, when one opens the experience centre, we have created experiences which are walkthrough driven, powered by virtual reality (VR). Moreover, our platform provides the facility wherein brokers can store their leads. Similarly, we provide subgroups in the application, for various stakeholders. Our platform has a booking engine depending on various phases. So, various elements of the total process have been under the platform.

What is the timeline for launching the new product aimed at small to mid-tier realtors?

We will launch a new product aimed at small to mid-tier realtors within the next six to eight months. We will continue working on behavioural analytics and predictive AI models as part of the product roadmap.

What are the current financial metrics and profitability status of the company? Are you planning to raise capital in the near future?

Yes, we are planning to raise fund for funding our future growth. We will complete the next round of funding within the next six months to achieve our growth milestones.

As far as profitability is concerned, entity-wise, we are profitable. We are growing very fast and expecting to double our revenue in the current financial year as compared to previous fiscal.

What are your plans for future product development? Are you planning to expand in any international market?

Neeraj Srivastava, who is one of the former top executives of Tata Group for Gulf region, has joined us as chairman, Relata GCC and Africa. Under his leadership, we are planning to expand in Gulf region and also exploring opportunities in other international markets.

What is the team size now? How big is your technology team? Can you give some perspective in this matter?

We are around 41-42 people team as of now. Our technology team is big as our core focus is on technology. Around 18 people are part of our technology team.

Many SaaS companies are likely to face disruption with the advent of several generative AI model? What are your views in this aspect as Relata is a SaaS firm? Are you leveraging LLMs (large language models) to improve efficiency as of now?

We are actively leveraging the new models in our solutions. We are working on those pieces and yes, it's working for us right now. So, we are already trying to understand what market needs and how best we can leverage this.

For consumer behaviour analysis, a lot of consumer data gets collected. Do you think, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act will act as a dampener?

No, it will not be a dampener. Because, what sort of data is being required (for us)? Once a buyer comes in, his/her engagement data, segmentation, and all of those, are required to gauge the conversion to sales. It's not like you're buying a product in an ecommerce site. Home is the most expensive investment for a person. So, social profiling might help up to 5-10 per cent and the rest of the things are the engagement data, which point towards whether someone is interested or not.