Tushar has two decades of experience in Information Technology and at Kagaay he has developed a completely digitised, transparent, Gamified Sales Platform for Real Estate Market.
Unsold inventory in India is increasing every quarter. As per India Real Estate Market Update Q1 2020: Residential – Unsold inventory increased from 4.42 Lac units in Q4 2019 to 4.55 Lacs units in Q1 2020. Real Estate Developers have locked-in capital of an estimated INR 3.7 trillion as of March 2020.
The two prime reasons for this situation are not alien to us.
- The Sluggish Sales Cycle in Real Estate which is anywhere between 1 Month to 6 months.
- Lack of eligible buyer from financials perspective
The 3rd challenge which got introduced in late 2019 and is bound to stay for a while is COVID, lockdown, social distancing which took the whole world by surprise that suddenly moving-out-of-home is considered to be the last option!
The topmost challenge is sluggish sales cycle – anything which is sluggish, needs motivation, reward, recognitions. Today, customers are showing interest, conducting numerous site visits, negotiating for “Right” Price. The result of this is a sales cycle which goes up to 6 months for a successful transaction. To fast-track this process “Gamification” of Sales is required. As Dr Lennart Nacke, Director of the HCI Games Group at the University of Waterloo’s Games Institute in Canada, explains gamification as “to engage people meaningfully with interactions that would otherwise be considered bland.”
There are 4 main aspects to any gamified product: Recognition, Competitions, Leader boards, Visualisation. The first steps towards achieving Gamification in sales is to Digitize the experience. Today there are many successful discovery platforms in the market who have made the Real Estate inventory information available to users. Buyers are using them to discover the right property. However, the sales cycle starts after this. The need is to bring 100% digitisation From Discovery to Possession of Property.
For example, during COVID period many big brands in Automobile brought their car showrooms to users’ personal devices like mobile, tablets and laptops. In 3 clicks luxury cars can be purchased. The question is, “Can Real Estate be sold online?” With digital India push from Govt. of India, soon this going to be new normal. Today technology is in place to Virtually visit the places sitting at our home. If we make the right information available to the buyer using Virtual Reality, Global Positioning Systems, Geo Tagging, 3D walkthroughs, Drone shoots etc the confidence of buyers will definitely increase in purchasing the real estate online. While it may not completely wipe out physical visits, it will definitely reduce the need.
There are many other ways to engage buyers during sales – consider famous flash sales that happen from eCommerce giants like Amazon and Flipkarts of the world. They are so popular due to this fear of missing out. Same applies to Real Estate inventory too!
Now while Gamification takes care of Sluggish Sales Cycle, how can one guarantee Financially Eligible buyers? Luckily there are young fintech start-ups who have devised solution around it. Today with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, a user can be evaluated for loan eligibility digitally. The use of AIML technologies along with sales data from so many decades, it is possible to predict and commit assured sales. It is high time for realtors to realise that change is required in the way their products are marketed and sold.