1st SaaS-based Real Estate Data & Portfolio Management platform – Mr AnandMoorthy, CEO, Props AMC

• Tell us something about your company

Props{AMC} is India’s 1^st subscription based data and portfolio management platform – to help property owners and advisors to manage, monitor and market in the most intuitive and organized manner. The platform supports high level transparency to the title and transaction of owned and managed properties to cut transaction time dramatically.

• How did you come up with this idea?

I was in multiple roles in investing in real estate with developer, real estate fund, nfbc and private wealth for 18 years in India, the common problem was dependencies on multiple speculative sources which end up in high valuation, high diligence cost and high transaction time. Also I notice while real estate is considered to be the more than 60% of any individuals net worth, it was never dealt or monitored like a financial investment on a tech enabled platform

• According to you, how many people use this service in India?

Ironically there is no solution in India yet wherein one can manage their properties in the most effective manner. PropsAMC built a beta version for large wealth firms and HNIs helping them manage their properties in a sophisticated way. We recently launched our retail Free version for multiple property owners to become Asset Smart! We believe over a 1Mn people/corporates are actively invested in real estate who will constantly need a platform for better decision making and monitoring. These 1Mn would own or manage properties worth over $3 Trillion

• Demand for commercial real estate will rise up. Is that true? If yes, what is your take on it 

Many studies have indicated that the commercial real estate has picked up in consumption in the range of 8-12% last 2 years. But the price per sqft really hasn’t. Also the effective escalation weren’t affected in tenanted properties. Hence, we believe the “consumption to price increase” relativity is the real growth of any sub-sector in real estate. The rent hasn’t grown more than 2-3% annually in cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon, Chennai and Hyderabad. The yields remain suppressed to lowest levels ever at 6.5%-8.5% for good commercial assets. The only thing which is evident is the foreign investment in rental assets due to steady consumption and IT growth story. This may be due to the dollar denominated investments having less return in their own country. One needs to be for a long haul (8-10) years for making meaningful returns in commercial assets.

• Who are your biggest clients?

Enterprise Clients like Karvy Private Wealth, IIFL Wealth, Sanctum Wealth, Knight Frank, Juris Corp Legal and KantiKaramsey Valuators. We also have 22 HNI whose properties worth 1500 Cr is managed on our platform

• What would you recommend the people to do?

1. Start looking at real estate as investment, so what you have contributed in your own equity to buy the property minus your liabilities and cost of holding needs to be a compulsory factor to stay invested.
2. Many people are unaware that they are earning less than an FD rate on year on year basis on their property investments. Most importantly start adding time factor to properties in your portfolio to know which one is performing better. If required exit at loss.
3. PropsAMC help you achieve this on an intuitive platform in 7-10 min on any property of any value. If one knows when to buy or sell a stock or a mutual fund, the same logic needs to apply to owned properties too.

• Why is it that this service has not been introduced yet?

Properties are always passed on in family, its an asset class which is the most trusted, leveraged but highly illiquid. Also the switch in a property is a long drawn process which requires time and opportunity identification. Also it was the best mechanism to park black money. With all these factors we believe Indians don’t take consider to challenge any property’s financial performance.

With the millennium drift of rental economy, sharing information and space, over-crowding of cities, high innovations there will be lot of pressure on property owner / investors to find the right way to manage, monitor and market, that’s where PropsAMC comes in!

• How do you calculate and collect your data?

Calculate: We have created a workflow keeping an account of any property’s “buy-hold-sell” life-cycle which ends up in creating a ledger of debit and credits including tax, helping the user to calculate its accurate performance on a specific day of existence.

Collect: The data collection process to make our platform transparent and non-speculative is a humongous process and involves curating openly available public data from credible sources of transaction importance.

• Is there anything else you would like to add?

Properties need financial inclusion in every person’s financial portfolio. A platform where you can gross up all your property details including financial, ongoing income-expenses, documentation to get a score or rating will become compulsory to sell faster. Additionally, transparency in the way how a land is acquired to what permissions to how ultimately one owns it will bring down transaction time and cost dramatically.

PropsAMC will bridge the way one invests & owns a property like a stock or a mutual fund creating a higher liquidity environment for real estate properties.

Corporate Comm India(CCI Newswire)