CHALLENGING THE MOST SCEPTICAL MARKET EVER; An Interview with Amit Agarwal, NoBroker.com
This week we have Amit as the contributor. Find him here talking his heart out about vandalisation of his office, growth, probable CEO and scepticism.
Question 1
Let’s go to Sep 2015. It must have been a tough time for everyone in the company. And as far as we believe, you were also forced to keep your physical location hidden for some time. Recalling that incident today, what was the feeling back then and how does it feel today.
It was a challenging time, more because we never expected such an event and were completely unprepared to handle it. As an entrepreneur, what I feel is that being super-rational helps in handling difficult situations. That’s what we did.
We housed people in temporary offices and start searching for the next office. Today when I look back, I am super surprised at how the entire team came together and fought back at the situation. Not even a single person quit, not even a junior call centre person. Suddenly a feeling of togetherness bounded the team. Our customers were super supportive and hundreds of messages and emails poured in.
Question 2
Coming down more to your business, let’s talk some operations. Referring to one of your interviews with a leading news channel in 2017, you were targeting to be in 10–15 new cities. Now, considering the existing growth rate in terms of cities you have expanded to (which are 6 in total and Capital is not the one) the target looks far away from the reach. Is everything well at NoBroker?
Thankfully things are fantastic at NoBroker. We looked at our capital deployment and size of the market and realised that the market is so big that it makes sense to capture higher market share in existing cities, rather than deploying capital in newer cities. Our goal of being in the top 15 cities remain intact. Having said that, we would not commit the mistake of expanding too fast without capturing the deeper market share in existing cities. Customer demand for non-brokerage is quite high in other cities. We are thankful to our customers for their love and we hope to cover the country quite soon.
Question 3
Coming back again to the growth story, considering the market situation, it looks a little gloomy. Companies like PropTiger and MagicBricks which are much, much evolved than a lot of players have profits nowhere on the horizon. So taking the same case for NoBroker, if it’s not profitability then what is the thing that Nobroker is exactly after?
I am not in a position to comment on the strategies and financials of other companies. At NoBroker, in the past 4 years, we have realized that our basic business model is fundamentally profitable. It is difficult to create C2C ( customer-to-customer) marketplace like us, compared to a regular classified. But once created, it is hugely profitable. In terms of revenue and contribution margin, we are clearly seeing that in our older cities.
Our aim is to focus on city-wise profitability first, while we keep on investing in newer cities, and then move towards firm-wide profitability. Real estate as an industry is doing quite well, growing both in units of houses as well as in long-term prices. Urbanisation, young demographic dividend and easy home loans have fueled the real estate market’s growth.
Question 4
Now that we are discussing Industry, there was Rahul, founder of housing.com, there was his debacle and there is this ecosystem. What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs in terms of the way of doing business?
I am not completely aware of Rahul and the situations that he went through. The only thing that I can say is that entrepreneurship is a difficult path. Often the challenges faced by the entrepreneur is not visible to people who are outside.
My suggestion to budding entrepreneurs is to self-assess whether it is the glamour and success of successful entrepreneurs that is motivating them or an internal strong drive. If it is the latter, don’t think and take the plunge. No matter what the end outcome is, you will never regret.
Question 5
Summing up the entire Interaction, here is a question that might actually be a thought-provoking one. If not you, who in the organisation deserves to be the CEO?
All three of us founders have equal participation in strategic decision making. So I will translate this question as who should lead the firm, if not the current founders. Well, I would say that the baton should then go to the most passionate person in the entire firm. The person can be from marketing, business or technology. It does not matter. The missing skills can be learnt or great people can be roped in, to fill the gaps. But what matters is the passion and hunger to take the firm ahead. If there is someone who thinks about NoBroker even while brushing his/her teeth in the morning, that person deserves to be the CEO of the company.
About the Moderator: Anurag is working with HappyLocate.com where he is leading comms. with India’s finest enterprises for an end to end relocation management tool. His day involves efforts to make sure that 100s of corporate relocations happen with ease. Find him at trnd.ml/anurag
