What’s the most essential need of buyers and sellers in real estate?
With the continual rise in property prices, the prime need of flat owners, landowners, and property investors is to generate maximum returns from their assets. In such cases, good property management advice from a genuine source is invaluable. Likewise, for an individual, investing in a dream home takes years of hard work, savings, and numerous sacrifices.
In most of the cases, an apartment may look attractive and affordable which makes the buyer feel its value proposition. However, that apartment might be built on an illegally reclaimed land or right next to a wastage disposal area. Similarly, if a property owner wants to rent/sell his property, they need to find the right tenant and go through the burdensome process of agreement, document verification, etc. In India, this unorganized property management sector is the major issue in real estate which makes it far difficult for buyers to choose the best property according to their expectations.
How SafeKeys’ approach caters to these present requirements of buyers?
Following the “Customer at the Centre” approach, Hyderabad, India-based SafeKeys strives to offer organized real estate services ranging from Tenant Management, Rental Assistance, and Property Management to future Repair and Maintenance. The team of SafeKeys has deeply researched the real estate sector in India and found that the real estate buyers in India significantly lack confidence due to the fear of being conned. There is not enough transparency between buyers and sellers. Therefore, SafeKeys aims to address such vital issues with its strong organization process management, transparent conversations, and proactive incident management to bridge this communication gap between buyers and sellers and delivers the best possible resolution to clients.
The stringent and reliable processes in SafeKeys help clients with timely property visits and a detailed “State of the Property” report. Such reporting is further used as a feedback mechanism to better manage clients’ property and expectations. The company relies on improving the strategy and solutions steadfastly to uplift customers’ faith in it. Therefore, with keen attention to detail, the team of SafeKeys continually works towards enhancing customer experience than the previous interactions.
What encouraged the founding team to establish SafeKeys?
Swetha Suppala, the Co-founder and CEO of SafeKeys and her fellow founding members established the company to solve some of the most important problems in real estate management. Prior to founding the company, this passionate group of individuals used to discuss key business ideas during their commute to the office. Frequently, they would land into problems in different sectors like food, retail, software services, etc. As days passed, the team faced a practical problem. It was about their colleague who needed to leave his home due to an onsite appointment abroad. Therefore, that situation has given rise to numerous crucial problems of maintaining his dream home. There were challenges like showing the property to prospective rentals, legal process, and documentation, managing verification, and payments related issues.
Swetha and team decided to eliminate these challenges. In doing so, they did a simple market survey and came up with a startling outcome. They found that the workforce in India is mostly mobile who frequently relocate according to their job preferences or appointments to various cities in the country as well as abroad. Thus, when they leave a property, the property related activities are either handled by relative or friends, security guards or agents. Such scenarios are the major causes of lower rental yields, vacant property for months, and value depreciation of the property due to poor maintenance, and in some cases, owners have to sell those properties at a much lower rate of interest. Such challenges encouraged Swetha and her partners to establish SafeKeys and create effective property management services. Today, the company is successfully assisting clients with a range of organized property management strategies so that its clients can sell/buy/rent their properties hassle-free with complete peace of mind.
How the company aims to expand in other regions?
Currently, SafeKeys is serving a broad customer base which majorly includes non-resident Indians and local clients living in other cities of India. Their non-resident customers are from countries like the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The team of SafeKeys is continually working towards expanding its presence to serve other locations in India.
Sharing her upcoming plans, Swetha asserts, “We are looking to apply the same business model in other metro cities in India as well and optimistic to start our services in Bangalore and Pune very shortly.” Similarly, Swetha and team have already begun discussing their funding requirements with potential investors. Further, the team is communicating with their investors in utilizing their network and mentoring skills for SafeKeys. Moving ahead with the new growth strategies, Swetha proudly shares, “This will be an important milestone as you will see a more technology-focused SafeKeys in some of the key real estate markets in India.”
Recently, SafeKeys has witnessed an amazing quarter with a 30% QoQ growth and is focusing to achieve more. Finally, when asked to share a piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in this sector, the well-versed Swetha stated, “In real estate sector, trust is very fragile, the critical challenge is to win the trust and confidence of the dream home owners. So work hard to win that trust and provide the best of your services as one bad review can have a cascading impact on the business.”
