4Ps B&M: In this whole thing, you haven’t talked about your advertising strategies and plans.
Tanuj: A Coca Cola has to go for advertising, It has 5% of its revenues set aside for advertising. We also have 10% of our revenues set aside for marketing, but that is for lead generation marketing and not brand marketing. A brand will be built at some point of time when we believe that we have an offering. We are still evolving, processes are not strong, we are still an early baby. For example, we will avoid doing a full=blown campaign at this stage. Yes, that may make sense when we control the monopoly in the market. Yes, when there is a demand generated by one million hits on my website everyday, and I am able to cater to them and am able to transact with them, then yes, I might advertise to keep those eyeballs coming.
4Ps B&M: You have had a PR campaign where you have told the world that you have achieved operational profitability in such a short time. How did you do that?
Kanika: We reached operational profitability in 22 months flat.
Tanuj: Without taking the name of our competitors, our cost is the same as them, but our revenues are four times higher. And we are running our business with the same people that they used to have. It’s just that we have been a sales-centric organization. I have never been a fan of technology taking over the organization. I have always believed that technology should be central to an organization to enable it to grow 100 times faster. The mind and heart of the organization should be in the industry where they are. We were and are very clear – we are a sales organization. Our DNA is sales; and technology has to play a very important role so that we are not limited in our growth. If we are doing “x” revenue per month now, how do we make it “10x” in a few years with the help of technology? It could be usng internal ERP, it could be using lead generation campaigns, it could be digital marketing, it could be portal traffic, it could be anything, but the focus has to be sales-centric.
4Ps B&M: How would you see the growth going forward?
Tanuj: Our target is that by 2019, we should be earning an income of over $100 million. We’re targeting a 15% market share of the Indian real estate market, which means around seven to eight times growth from here. In the global real estate arena, we are still tiny. Only 5% of our work force is in the global market, and this we need to increase to 20 to 25%. In mortgage, we are already India’s third largest player and our target is to become the largest player in the next 12-15 months. Then, we are planning to launch estate portfolio management services. No one in India, in a sizable scale, does residential portfolio management services; we aim to be the largest player there. These will be our four key verticals. What Kanika is concurrently focusing on is to create a marketing agency, which is a non sales vertical. This will create a digital army and will help in lead generation for all the developers, irrespective of the fact whether they have a working relationship with us or not. There can always be a relationship on the marketing front.
Kanika: Especially in the global markets.
Tanuj: I truly believe it’s over a billion dollar organization opportunity...
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