Full transcript: Vishal Gupta — Property Dollar: bridging the property data gap
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This is an automated transcript of the episode, lightly edited for readability. Please excuse any errors.
Vishal Gupta: Thank you so much, Kylie, for having me.
Kylie Davis: It is, it is great to have you here, and I'm, I'm glad to see, um, that you've recovered from the PropTech Awards. So, um, congratulations on your win.
Vishal Gupta: Thank you so much. Yeah.
Kylie Davis: And from tho- those listening at, those listening at home, um, Vishal is a mad fan of gin, like a collector of exotic gins-... right? So be careful if you go to the after party with him. That is my only warning.
Vishal Gupta: Right.
Kylie Davis: Um, uh, so look, I'm really excited. I l- I love PropertyDollar, um, and I'm looking forward to talking to you about it. But to kick off, the first question's always the hardest. Um, tell us about the PropertyDollar elevator pitch.
Vishal Gupta: Great. Kylie, my elevator pitch is gonna be 40 floors long-... elevator.
Kylie Davis: Oh, please no.
Vishal Gupta: But I'll share. No. Uh, look, essentially PropertyDollar is a tech pla- platform that helps people, uh, grow and manage their property portfolios using technology and data intelligence.
Kylie Davis: Perfect. Oh, beautiful. A beautiful answer. So, so how does it do that? What, what's the problem that it's solving, and, and, and how do all the elements come together in it?
Vishal Gupta: So I, I'll start going from level two to level 40 now.
Kylie Davis: Yeah, no, now you get to go, go hard.
Vishal Gupta: Great. The sense of it is that if you, if you sort of start looking at the customer sets in Australia, they're people who do not own a property, they're first-home buyers, wanna get in. It solves different set of problems for these guys, and that's about providing them clarity, providing them confidence so they can take those decisions. Um, and that's a very big problem. And, uh, because I've been involved on the property side of businesses as well, I've seen people coming to me at the age of 55, 57 and saying haven't made a decision to get into the property, and now they are quite nervous to get in. And that hand-holding can not always be provided by, uh, human touch. It's important to have a buyer's agent-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... or a real estate agent, but just to have that extra confidence that they're making these smarter decisions, um, we play an important role. Whether that's about their borrowing, whether that's about their repayments, whether that's about government benefits, whether that's about finding an area they wanna invest in or buy in and live in, all that stuff. And next up, you have people who own a home, and they've tried every little bit of effort to pay off that loan, and that's it. And later on they realize someone comes in and tells them there are tax benefits. You should have taken a, uh, you know, advantage of that, and you should build on that. They have different kinds of problems now. Now they are going over the mindset of an investor's mindset. That's where they need to get out of the emotional shackles that, hey, my friends live here. I live here. I want here. It's gotta be pure numbers-driven decision. And that's-
Kylie Davis: Mm
Vishal Gupta: ... where the app is, um, packed with a lot of, uh, features, whether that's a calculator doing cashflow analysis for them, negatively geared property, positively geared property, the repayments or tax benefits, how that they come into play, or the depreciation. So we bundle it up with them to give confidence to that end investor or, I won't call end user, but a investor- How do they take that courage of making a smarter decision again to get into the investment journey from a owner occupier to an investor? And when you have other clients who've got all, already got multiple properties, their problems are much different, and they need to have more efficiency built in, more optimization built in. And we've got multiple tools in the app where, um, uh, you know, one of the favorite ones where people are getting so much savings done through, um, um, uh, open banking loan calculators, which is helping them save or making their loans much efficient. So, uh, holistically, uh, it's one app that's really impacting all different kinds of users, um-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... who have anything to do with the property market.
Kylie Davis: Yeah. So I guess property buyers, it's a, it's, it's empowering property buyers to make better decisions around h- how they, how they're gonna buy and to help them sort of model and forecast it in lots of ways and understand that decision-making.
Vishal Gupta: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Kylie Davis: Fan- fantastic. So, so how... Well, I guess, you know, how big is the pro- how, is the problem that you're solving here? Like, um, I guess we see that the market is, there's about f- f- 500,000 transactions a year, and, um, and I guess you're covering everybody in that, that market, right?
Vishal Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. Look, uh, the, the, the scale of the problem or the size of the market that we talk about could be looked at in many ways and many forms. Now-
Kylie Davis: Mm
Vishal Gupta: ... if we were to say, um, you know, ob- obviously we're based out of New South Wales, and the average age of a first home buyer is 36. If we-
Kylie Davis: Mm
Vishal Gupta: ... shorten that age and bring it to 30, and that's when people start working at the age of 14, right? My, my young one's already-... charging me money. Uh, so my question, yes, the cost of living is high, and the savings are hard, but starting work at 16 and 18 and taking 18 years to save money to get into the market is not the only reason people are that delayed in their decision-making. A lot of that is come, coming down to the education, the empowerment, or accessibility to information, or navig- navigating this space. So it's a very big problem if you ask me. I mean, the, if you look at the data from, uh, New South Wales Treasury, that clearly articulates or very simply tells us people who do not have properties when they get older are much worse off than people who have property as an asset, and they have much more chance of relying on the pension. It ha- It is a, it's a, it's a national disaster if you ask me. It, you know, that data needs to be translated into, um, um, enough sort of push or enough sort of, um, um, you know, elements in hands of people that they are then making these decisions of getting into the property market. So the problem size is huge. It has an impact on economy. It has on our pension schemes. It has an impact on people's own wealth creation. It has, it's a generational impact it has. People earning same sort of income, one owning a property, other doesn't. You know, if you apply whatever growth, uh, you know, engines or the elements you're looking at, 7%, 6% over a span of 20, 30, 40 years. Inflation is supporting the property. Your savings are getting eroded by inflation. Massive impact overall. But the size of the market, I guess we all know it's in, it's in excess of $10-11 trillion. Um, yeah, that's the size of the property market, but we're not, we're not building this tool with only Australia, um, as a focus. That's obviously our home, so that's the core of it. We gotta solve the problem at home before we go outside and help our-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... neighbors. Um, but what we've looked at is, uh, maybe around a group of seven to eight countries where this, this sort of technology or platform can be applied to solve this problem, and that size is in excess of $100 trillion.
Kylie Davis: Wow. Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Feel like-
Kylie Davis: Okay
Vishal Gupta: ... feel like Elon Musk here.
Kylie Davis: Yeah. Well, look, what, what I love about, um, PropertyDollar is that it feels like you're sort of democratizing property data for, for buyers from that, from that side. And until now, real- really you've only been able to access that data as a buyer if you either, you know, paid a, quite a hefty fee for it, or if you, um, agreed that you're gonna let agents kind of call you and contact you and things like that. So what's, what's your business model around it?
Vishal Gupta: Look, uh, and, and, and, and that's, um, the, the, the honest answer is that the reason, um, there is cost around is because data cost. Let's just say-
Kylie Davis: Mm
Vishal Gupta: ... that the, um, the, uh, I wouldn't use the word larger players, but to access large amount of data cost, doesn't matter who's ac- accessing it, whether it's us or other players out there. So I don't wanna point fingers, but it is costly affair.
Kylie Davis: Mm.
Vishal Gupta: So the model we've embarked on is, is essentially a freemium model where a certain amount of information we wanna provide our clients, uh, for no cost, so they can get used to it. They can see the value in it. They can see how it can actually really impact them in either saving money or making money or saving time. And then we've got certain kind of features, uh, packed into the app where they want a leverage of some automation or AI or this and that which brings in... which where they can have a better result because it's even more saving time for them. That's where we'll charge them for the app usage and stuff. So it's almost like that. But then we have built some fringe tools for wider stakeholders of the industry, which are subscription-based, but PropertyDollar is, is free. For a basic version of PropertyDollar, uh, we've kept it for free. Yeah.
Kylie Davis: Mm. Awesome. And so are you encouraging buyers to go down the new home path or existing re- real estate, or do you have a preference there?
Vishal Gupta: Look, it's a very good question, and the answer to this is that no, we don't want to, um, drive buyers' choices towards a skewed property class.
Kylie Davis: Mm.
Vishal Gupta: And the as- the reason for that is, uh, horses for courses, right? There might be people for whom it'll only make sense to buy older property because older property's $80,000 cheaper than a newer property.
Kylie Davis: Mm.
Vishal Gupta: But then there is another person who is, who for whom it just makes sense to go out and buy a brand-new property because they can have a depreciation offset.
Kylie Davis: Mm.
Vishal Gupta: So we're not impacting, uh, we're not, uh, sort of coaxing people into a certain decision-making. We're providing them enough data, education, and intelligence. Then they can figure it out what is the best, uh, option that is suited to their own needs.
Kylie Davis: Got it. And so, so tell us a bit about your background, Vishal. How did you get into this? What, what, um, what led to Property Dollar starting out?
Vishal Gupta: Yeah. I used to be the chief scientist at NASA. No. No. Look, my journey started off as, um, um... You know, I, I finished my studies in technology and business and worked in, uh, um, uh, Great Commonwealth Bank of Australia for-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... a good five and a half years. Um, you know, went through different parts of the bank, from business analyst to strategy, um, and other bits. Being a day trader in equities as well. But, um, the reason for, for my background to get into this space is essentially because I've been involved into investments from a very early stage, um, particularly property. Um, and that's where the journey's come through. But banker at heart still. Um, but yeah, now more of a, a, a technologist, uh, trying-
Kylie Davis: Okay
Vishal Gupta: ... to happen.
Kylie Davis: Awesome. Awesome. So, so how big is Property Dollar? How, how many... how big's your team? I mean, I've met, I've met many of them, but I had been drinking gin at the time with you, so-... I'm gonna-
Vishal Gupta: I'm now getting tagged as a guy who's gonna end up being in the pub with you all the time.
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: All right. So look, uh, Property Dollar-... we've still kept it quite lean. Um, we've got core team of four decision-makers, which sort of looks at different aspects of the, uh, of the business. Then we've got a little bit more spread out team here with another three to three, three other, uh, you know, uh, team members. So we got seven of us here. Then we've got a lot of consultants we work with back in Sydney, and then we've got a team of around 14 engineers behind the scene doing the most craziest of the part, uh, which makes us look good.
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah.
Kylie Davis: Okay. Okay, cool.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah.
Kylie Davis: So, so how do you see this space going? Like, so, you know, like you guys are... There's a, there's a... I'm noticing a, there's a couple of you, uh, sort of out there. So look, you know, we've come from a background where buyer's agents, um... W- well, you know, that, that, that sort of empowering buyers and especially empowering property investors. I think Property Star was the, one of the first ones, um, back, gosh, when I was still at News Corp-
Vishal Gupta: Yeah.
Kylie Davis: ... so like 20, uh, you know, 15 years ago.
Vishal Gupta: Right.
Kylie Davis: Uh, and that was all kind of more report driven. And so like the evolution of informing buyers and giving them power and insights into their portfolio or into their investment has been around for a little while.
Vishal Gupta: Yep.
Kylie Davis: So where do you see it going? What do you think are the biggest things that are impacting it at the moment?
Vishal Gupta: Look, uh, look, and, and you're spot on. Um, it isn't something new. I mean, if you look at the stock markets, I mean, you have the dashboards giving you a view of your stocks, whether you wanna buy-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... you wanna sell it, you wanna keep it, you wanna research it. That's been there for, uh, forever. I mean, that's where I, I sort of draw this idea from. When I left bank, I was very heavily involved in comms sec trading, and I was like, "For $5,000 worth of shares, you have everything on one screen." For fi- you know, for $5 million worth of properties, you go to-
Kylie Davis: No
Vishal Gupta: ... go to portals, uh, data, banks-
Kylie Davis: Go through the emails
Vishal Gupta: ... yeah.
Kylie Davis: That's the report.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah, through emails. That's it.
Kylie Davis: PDFs.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah, that's it. And, um, and, and that was the, that was where this idea came through. And, and fast-forward where we see this, um, uh, sort of pan out over the next... Look, I would only say next 12 to 24 months, because with the emergence of AI right now, saying in five years' time, we don't know-
Kylie Davis: Yeah
Vishal Gupta: ... where we will be. It's, it's-
Kylie Davis: Three years is too far
Vishal Gupta: ... actually impossible. Too far, right?
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm.
Vishal Gupta: And I think there'll be consolidation in this, in this industry. There are a lot of techs which exist out there. It is about who is actually adding value to the client, um, at the dollar level, right?
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm.
Vishal Gupta: Um, the customers are very, very... Customers are your true, uh, uh, mirror. You know, they will give you the real valid reason for you to exist or for you to perish. There's no one-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... out there. I mean, you can have any kind of business models around. So we see the, um, customers are getting more and more, um, information. They're getting more and more, uh, access to data. So it isn't just about providing data. It isn't about providing information. It is about simplifying that for your customer where it can tangibly, uh, deliver time-saving, money-saving, or can actually help them in growing their wealth, and that's where it's gonna be. So just like every other, uh, industry which has potentially shaped up, or the tech businesses which have shaped up, if you can influence the user behavior, you will survive. If you can't, you won't.
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Vishal Gupta: Second time we've entered
Kylie Davis: ... entering? Yeah. Okay. And so you are still very much a startup, right?
Vishal Gupta: We are, we are.
Kylie Davis: Yep.
Vishal Gupta: We are less than two years old. Like last time we-
Kylie Davis: Okay
Vishal Gupta: ... entered that, um, uh, the events, uh, or the, uh, the awards, we were barely four to six months into, into existence, and, uh, thanks for accepting us at that time. And, um, obviously, uh, it was great to see, uh, you know, this, this year's result. And, uh, um, that always gives us a bit of a comfort that we are on the right path or we're trying to do the right thing. Um, look, we, uh, in, in, in close to 16 and a half, 17 months now, 17 months I would say we've been in existence. Um, the, the product has been very widely accepted. That's one good, good thing. Um, that we've got now over $20 billion worth of assets on platform. Um-
Kylie Davis: Oh, fantastic
Vishal Gupta: ... yeah, we... Well, that's, that's one very, very good thing, and we're adding around 1.5 billion every month from the last month's data. Um, we want-
Kylie Davis: Yeah
Vishal Gupta: ... two months like that, so I keep telling my chief growth officer-... I want this-
Kylie Davis: Once is a surprise-
Vishal Gupta: ... to keep continuing
Kylie Davis: ... twice is a consequence, three is a trend.
Vishal Gupta: So there shouldn't be any stopping to this now, now that we embarked on this. This is a new milestone or, or, or, or the baseline for you. Uh, uh, but, but yeah, and we got very, very, very good user feedback, so our customer success officers, um, who's constantly engaging, we try and engage with at least 40, 50 clients every day, um, to get their feedback, to look at what they're trying to achieve out of it, what is it that next best thing they want in it. Um, so early stages, but yes, um, it's been a pretty rewarding journey so far with, um, um, with the feedback practically which we're getting from our clients and our, um, business stakeholders, uh, who are using our other products.
Kylie Davis: Awesome. Awesome. So, so what's been in the, in the journey, like since starting it up, um, how different is being a PropTech entrepreneur to, to, you know, working in the bank or working in the stock market? What... And what are your biggest lessons or s- find out, find- findings been? What, the things that surprised you the most?
Vishal Gupta: Okay. So I would have to rewind back the clock. So I do have some other businesses and, uh, into other different industries. And, uh, I have very well decently succeeded in those businesses to, um, uh, to make them profitable businesses.
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm.
Vishal Gupta: I think if I've got to rewind the clock and do one thing differently, and I, I guess I read way too many books when I was starting the startup. And, uh, I started the startup with a mindset of a startup, and I thought-
Kylie Davis: Yeah
Vishal Gupta: ... it should have been started like a typical business. I-
Kylie Davis: Yeah
Vishal Gupta: ... my only, only thing would be is, yes, it's a startup and it's cool and it's got tech and it's got the different kinds of things that are driving, um, the, the, the outcome. But at the end of the day, the outcome is very, very simple. The outcome is you got to solve a problem, you got to provide a product which, which is gonna sell, and you're gonna end up making your money, so the business sustain. So I think the, a good blend of more business and, uh, a 50/50 blend of business and tech would have been a better way to go about it.
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: When I first started off, o- obviously, uh, there was a lot of excitement. There was... There weren't enough tools in the market like this, and we, we became too much of a tech entrepreneur and technology and technology and technology. We wanna build this, we wanna build that. Um, it was like a kid with, uh, too many toys to play around with and a lot of excitement around. Rewind back, I think, um... And that's where we did our bit of pivot in last three, four months, and which has started to show results to us, that it needs to be r- still run like a business. You still got to be judicious about how much you're spending, how much you, you're making, and how you circling it back in. And, um, and like I've always said, like, your clients are your best, uh, judge whether this product meets the, uh, right fit or not. And then now we are more geared about clients than we were geared about our aspirations or what we wanna provide the clients.
Kylie Davis: Yeah. Okay, interesting. So look, I'm gonna assume a lot of those books were American, because there is a very different mentality between-... American startup kind of mentality of, like, find the investors-
Vishal Gupta: Yeah
Kylie Davis: ... and then just burn it to get the c-
Vishal Gupta: Yeah
Kylie Davis: ... you know, like burn through the money to get the customers, compared to that Australian mentality, which is very much sort of build a good solid business and try and bootstrap it a bit more and, like, make it profitable and then grow, you know, like grow, grow, grow from, from-
Vishal Gupta: Absolutely
Kylie Davis: ... from there. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it is half and half. And, and it's one of the, I think, one of the lessons that I'm hearing from so many PropTech founders at the moment that, uh, and even from the VCs, is that- The, like, the tech's also... Like, the tech's great. You need good tech. But really the thing that makes you stand out is adoption and-
Vishal Gupta: Yep
Kylie Davis: ... and, and engagement from your client, like, engagement from your clients, and therefore, you know, return users and, and some really basic financial fundamentals around showing that people are prepared to pay and stay.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, no, fully agree with that. And that's where, um, the, uh, you know, the features that we're packing up in the app is essentially to keep the clients more sticky, and I think that's the nature of any business. If you can have a repeat client, nothing better than that than going on acquiring a new client. And, um, you know, with over 15,000-plus clients that we have, we're constantly keeping a lo- you know, keeping a tight eye on how many people are coming back in, what else are they wanting? So looking at the user behavior through different analyt- analytical tools and feeding them similar or more features of that kind that they wanna sort of, um, uh, that can add more value to their journey is, is the key of, uh, um, you know, for a... That's really the key to, to, you know, uh, unpack this, uh, um, you know, this opportunity really.
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So one of the things that occurs to me, one of the things that I'm seeing out in market at the moment, and I think this is reflective of the interesting times that we live in, right? Because we do have this generational transfer of wealth going on from older generations down to younger generations over the next 10 years. We have a major housing crisis. There's a lot of... We're seeing a sort of increase in the number of proptech out there that is trying to help buyers navigate the current system-
Vishal Gupta: Yeah
Kylie Davis: ... as best they can. But at the end of the day, it doesn't change the fact that the, the system is pretty broken. So what do you see as some of the biggest key... Like, if, if, Vishal, if I could give you housing policy-
Vishal Gupta: Yeah
Kylie Davis: ... what would you change? And say, "Look, off you go. Let's just fix it the way you think it should be fixed."
Vishal Gupta: The housing minister's not listening to this one.
Kylie Davis: Oh, I hope he is. I hope she is. Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Oh, yeah. Uh, look, I, I think the, um, the emergence of all these proptechs, including ours, is essentially, uh, helping people to... Or it's act- it, it at least some of our proptechs, which are the client-side proptech, are trying to solve one part of the equation, which is to, uh, speed to decision-making, right?
Kylie Davis: Mm.
Vishal Gupta: Um, on the client side, if y- you have a beautiful product, but if I'm not ready, then it's not gonna be, you know, they, it's not gonna be bought, and then you're not gonna go out and build another product. So really the two parts of the equation needs to be sorted. One, uh, the client or the customer end user needs to be educated, empowered, or need to have that clarity or confidence to make the decision. Um, access to capital is obviously the another element where we keep seeing different kinds of policies coming in, starting 1st of October, there's another one going in, helping with the LMI. But that's the demand side, right?
Kylie Davis: Mm.
Vishal Gupta: That's the demand side of this equation. So which is what we need to attack, that there has to be... There is demand. We need to continue to build demand and continue to provide tools and capital to these people with the demand so they can go out and make a decision to buy. The second part of the equation, which is a larger part of the equation, is the how do we bring right kind of supply? Not just the supply, but the right kind of supply to the market so there is a right fit. It's just like us as a proptech. You know, you want the right customer fit. Go to market with the right customer fit. It's the same with the housing policy. You wanna bring in the supply, but if you wanna bring in the supply where the cost of buying a product is 1.3 million and the customer needs to, or a client needs to save 230,000 plus stamp duty or whatever, 260,000, and at the age of 30, 35, there aren't many people with 230,000 in their bank balance after tax.
Kylie Davis: Down the back of the couch. Yep.
Vishal Gupta: That's it. So it, it just doesn't solve the problem. So lot needs to be done to streamline those elements that goes into, you know, whether you're, you know, going through the DAs and the approval processes or the zonings and, you know, infrastructure or encouragement, um, to people so they go out and live in certain areas. So there is, again, a behavioral change that needs to happen on the client side, but then on the, on the policy side, we need to do everything possible to bring product quicker to the market, and has to have encouragement for the developers, because I do deal with a lot of large developers who are bringing those products, and they're struggling day in, day out. You can't practically bring in a product to the market in a certain timeframe. It takes such large timeframe, and it takes such amount of cost, it becomes not non-viable for a customer to go out and buy.
Kylie Davis: Mm.
Vishal Gupta: So lot needs to be done on those elements.
Kylie Davis: Yeah. And, and that needs to be done sort of at all, at all different levels of, of te- of, um, of government, doesn't it? So you must be, you must be seeing, and, you know, de-identified data, it all to one site, but you must be seeing some interesting behavior inside the, inside your app, um, in terms of what... Can you, can you give us any insights into, into that? Like, h- is there anything that you're seeing in terms of the way people are using the app or how buyers are, you know, moving from nothing to buying something? Ha- have you noticed anything in that, that around how it's ch- changed or anything that surprised you there?
Vishal Gupta: I'll, I'll, I'll give a disclaimer. We are ISO certified, so all data-
Kylie Davis: Right
Vishal Gupta: ... secured, so we can't access-
Kylie Davis: No, no, high level. I'm talking high level
Vishal Gupta: ... high level trends.
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: But ab- absolutely. We monitor user behavior at a macro level, so we can actually help them with the problems that they have. Um, one of the key things, and, and this behavior keeps shifting as well. So we were seeing... I'll, I'll, I'll share something that we were finding, um, within our platform quite a bit, that in the three months pr- or rather two months prior before the interest rate cut started, there was lot of people trying to build efficiencies around their mortgages, and we could see that, that they're constantly checking those calculators, or they're trying to see through open banking, which are the better rates and stuff like that. So there was a lot of action happening in that, that part of the equation. And then in last couple of months, we have started to see people looking at more borrowing capacity. So we can see there that people are now looking at maybe I can borrow more money or get into the market.
Kylie Davis: Down, and I can get more. Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah. The adjusted cut's been implemented. Before, they were trying to save money, now they're trying to see if they can enter the market a little bit more. So these are two very simple, evident trends. Obviously, we see a lot of trends around people with the type of properties or the suburbs they're looking to buy in and stuff like that, but then that's a good- because we're an Australia-wide app, uh, there aren't, um... I wouldn't say they all are looking to buy in, uh, Bondi or they all are looking to buy in here, but that fragmented data does exist. But these are the two key elements that we were seeing. And, and one of the other things we, we did see was the depreciation. A lot of time before the tax time coming in, people were all trying to work out how much depreciation they can claim or they can achieve for their property. So they were essentially the large, uh, three trends that we saw. Uh...
Kylie Davis: Awesome. Awesome. So, so where do you think we're going? Um, what, what do you think is coming next in this space?
Vishal Gupta: Look, I, like, the way I see this, um, I mean, there will be many changes, and there'll be many people trying to solve many other problems in this proptech space. But I, I still see that, um, uh, the way, the way this, the whole proptech journey is going to, or proptech industry would evolve, just like many other industries in Australia, it's a, it's not a very large market size when you compare to this. You'll have a few leaders emerging. There'll be consolidation in the industry. But the, the last person standing would be really... Or I wouldn't say last person standing, but the l- few companies who will do really well will be attacking the core of customer need, which is make them money, save them time-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... or save them money, right?
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Well, whichever way they're doing it, these two or three things is gonna impact. And I think there will be, um, e- with, especially with the new, um, the millennials coming into the market, the, there will be change or shift in the user behavior as well. Um, with, with all the VRs and all the other stuff happening. I mean, 2003 I was wanting to start a e-commerce business, and a very close friend of mine said, "Who is going to buy shoes online without trying?" And I said, "You are smart. No." I, there's no way, no value in this idea, and I stopped. Now, the question is, who is going to buy a property online without looking at it? And, uh, I think we're not far where, um, things like open banking, open, you know, AI, and all of this, and emergence of, uh, you know, maybe fractional buying, all of that will come into play. Um, but we will get faster into the market. The decision time will be shortened. People will get more and more, um, you know, uh, astute with their, with their decision-making. But it'll all come down to who's solving the real problem.
Kylie Davis: Yeah, yeah. I think... Look, I think it's possible people will st- Well, who is gonna buy a property without seeing it first? Well, the entire off-the-plan market-
Vishal Gupta: Off-the-plan market
Kylie Davis: ... does that pretty well, right?
Vishal Gupta: Yes.
Kylie Davis: Like, happens every day.
Vishal Gupta: That's right. That's right. That's right.
Kylie Davis: It is very possible. And, and what do we use, what does the majority of that market use to market?
Vishal Gupta: Yeah.
Kylie Davis: Your imagination.
Vishal Gupta: Imagination.
Kylie Davis: A picture and your imagination.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah. And a beautiful display suite.
Kylie Davis: A beautiful display suite and your imagination.
Vishal Gupta: That's it. That's it.
Kylie Davis: H- yeah, cool. And so where... So you mentioned before that you were looking at expanding into a couple of different countries. Like, what, what's that sort of roadmap look like, and, and what's coming up for your tech?
Vishal Gupta: Look, we've, we've sort of given ourselves a target of, um, um, $250 billion assets on platform. Uh, once we achieve that $250 billion assets on platform in Australia, that's when we will, um, get out of this country and try and go to other markets. So, um, but at this point, we, we've been approached by a couple of people from different countries, from UK, from New Zealand, um, with a large anchor client who would want this kind of tech to be deployed in there. So, uh, never say never. So if there is a large anchor client, um, like one of the Big Four here, there's some institutions out there, if they reach out and we crack a deal, we will go be- before that. But at this point of time, I think we'll, for the next couple of years, we're very committed to hit that $250 billion mark of assets on platform because that gives us over $120 billion worth of loan insights and a lot of other insights. So there is still a lot of work to be done here to add efficiency, um, add sort of, uh, optimi- or rather optimizing the portfolios for people out here before we start to go in. But there are many other countries, like I said. New Zealand is one. UK is another one. Canada is another one where you could, um, where, where you will find decent value in offering such a product to the clients.
Kylie Davis: And, and so you... H- what's the breakdown in terms of how many... W- w- what sort of rough proportions of users inside your platform are first-time buyers versus investors versus, um, versus other, other buyers?
Vishal Gupta: Yeah.
Kylie Davis: Or people just wanting to understand what they've already got better?
Vishal Gupta: Yeah, look, there, there are, there are certain indicators we use to figure out if people are first-home buyers or investors or people with, they're not first-home buyers, but they just don't have property. They-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... used to have one. So I would say the breakdown is essentially we got 70% of people who are on our platform are investors.
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm.
Vishal Gupta: Uh, close to 20%-plus are first-home buyers, and that's where we wanna put more and more effort on. That we really-
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm
Vishal Gupta: ... wanna do the right thing by them and help more first-home buyers to get in, into the market.
Kylie Davis: Mm-hmm.
Vishal Gupta: And the remaining 10%, which comes into that bracket of whether people are, um, essentially downsizers or, uh, or people who had the property but don't have the property as well. And even with, with the, uh... I would add just a bit that of the, of the 10% that we have are, we're also taking into account people with only one property. That's just where-
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Yeah.
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Mm-hmm.
Kylie Davis: And, and so I know you mentioned before that you, your model is freemium, but, like, are you, are you sort of offering mortgages or things like that to people or, or what's... Or is it just sort of a, a SaaS- Additional service options
Vishal Gupta: It'll be additional service off- uh, offerings at the moment. No, we're not offering any product to clients. We're not offering them a property to buy or we're not offering them a, a mortgage out there at the moment. Uh, we're purely a tech platform at the moment, which is just trying to build more efficiency and pro- try and optimize the different part of their property journey through it. So we're really providing them more tech tools which they can use to make those smart decisions, but not necessarily selling a product at the moment.
Kylie Davis: Hmm. Okay. Okay. Cool. And so what's the next 12 months look like for you guys?
Vishal Gupta: Uh-
Kylie Davis: You gonna go to your 250 billion?
Vishal Gupta: Look, uh, we-
Kylie Davis: How long are you giving yourself for that?
Vishal Gupta: Yeah. We- we're very confident based on what we have in terms of roadmap and, uh, and, and where, you know, the, the rollouts we have. We... The enterprise solution, some of the, the ones we are rolling out at the moment. I would say very comfortably next year this time we will be at least $100 billion worth of assets on platform, if not more. So that's definitely on the cards. Um, there are some very, very, um, interesting tech tools we are building which will optimize a certain part of the property buyer's journey as well as investor journey. So we're working with some data scientists to prepare our own core products, not leveraging off some of the existing build products. So that'll be quite exciting as well. Um, and some, uh, predictive algorithms that we're working with, which is gonna be quite interesting as well for people to see, you know, what they should do and what they shouldn't. Uh, take it with a pinch of salt always. I always say that. Uh, but yeah, there's, there's a lot of tech build that's happening. There is, there is lot of stuff that's happening on the, the business side that we're doing as well, uh, where a lot of collaboration. One of the things that I love being part of the proptech ecosystem, I can, I can say absolutely with hand on heart that the amount of collaboration that exists in our ecosystem is just amazing. Absolutely amazing. Every time I have, uh, met fellow proptech, uh, players, it's been so seamless to collaborate with them. They're so open, so transparent, so much... Being in the same space is like, "Let's... Hey brother, let's just go make it happen together."
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: I love that bit. And I think, uh, we are very excited with partnering with some of the, those prop- uh, tech platforms within the proptech space. And I think together we will be rolling out some other tools as well, which will help our end user.
Kylie Davis: Do you wanna give a shout-out to anyone that you're working with? Are you able to?
Vishal Gupta: Yep, definitely.
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: There are, there are a few of them. Um, look, we're working with a very good tech partner, which is Downsizers is one of them. Um-
Kylie Davis: Oh, yeah. Shout out to Mark
Vishal Gupta: ... we've been work- Yeah. To Mark.
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: Uh, we work with them. There is another player called Ocubuy. We work with them a little bit. We've collaborated with them. Um, Htag is another, another great, uh, data company, which is providing a lot of intelligence to a lot of people in the country and, uh, and educating them. We partnering with Effie, uh, which is a-
Kylie Davis: Yeah
Vishal Gupta: ... financial fintech. Um, um-
Kylie Davis: Yeah
Vishal Gupta: ... working with Effie. We've already embedded with them in some systems. Yeah, there are quite a few. And, and then my apologies if I missed out any one of them.
Kylie Davis: That's okay.
Vishal Gupta: Uh, it's in the nick of moment. Um -
Kylie Davis: Yeah.
Vishal Gupta: ... just to name a few. Uh-
Kylie Davis: Pop yourself in the, pop yourself in the LinkedIn tag. Like tag yourself in LinkedIn if you-
Vishal Gupta: We will
Kylie Davis: ... if you are. If you're also partnering with, um, Property Dollar. Well, look, Vishal, it's been absolutely fantastic to talk to you. Thank you so much. It's been great finding out more about Property Dollar. I, I, um, I have downloaded it and I, uh, I love, uh, having a bit of a play around it. It's, it's, it's been fantastic. So thank you so much for your time.
Vishal Gupta: Thank you so much, Kylie, for having me.
Kylie Davis: Yeah, I look forward to our next, our next catch up over a G&T.
Vishal Gupta: Thank you.
Kylie Davis: Thanks.
Vishal Gupta: Thank you.
Kylie Davis: So what did you think of Property Dollar? I've personally downloaded the app, and it's a really easy and frictionless experience. It's quite lovely to use. It's part of a new trend we're seeing in proptech of technology that is empowering the previously powerless. And for too long, property buyers have been absolutely on their own, needing to do everything themselves. All their own research, find their own property, the lot. Tools like Property Dollar are changing that, and I love how Vishal was inspired by his time on the stock market and the dashboards that he had access to. I like how the team have adopted a freemium model. This is such a smart way to get adoption and to remove a friction point that prevents people from embracing your tech if you have the runway long enough in funding to support it. I'm working with another proptech at the moment. I think that's why that really landed for me. But this other proptech I'm working with is really struggling to win adoption that it needs, and its key investors are refusing to go down the path of freemium, insisting that it wash its face, um, in order to be successful. Now, I'm all for profitable proptech. But at the startup stage in transformative technology, you cannot be successful unless you can encourage people to adopt. And as an experienced investor, it's clear Vishal really understands this. I also love Property Dollar's approach to collaboration. I can personally vouch on how friendly and supportive the team at, um, Property Dollar are to other proptechs. Um, just do not let Vishal buy you a gin and tonic. Now, just before we go, are you a fast-growing proptech looking to take a new product to market, position yourself strongly through unique thought leadership and research, or are you struggling to wrangle all the strategic and tactical pieces of marketing so that they convert into real sales? Then I, Kylie Davis, and the PropTech Guru team would love to help. PropTech Guru, which is the consulting business I run with my husband, former Gartner director and media executive Mark Hollins, specializes in a service called Scalable CMO. Most proptechs have a marketing team in place, and many of them are just one or two young marketers struggling to do all the things. But with Scalable CMO, you get the perfect mix of top-level executive thinking, plus affordable and tactical executions to support, scale, and enhance your current team. To kick off, we audit your existing marketing with an overlay of where you need to get to, and we'll identify what's working and fit for purpose and what you need to do to hit your number. And then we create a strategic plan and the cost of delivery of the work required from digital marketing, CRM and automation management, content, media, social media, sales structure, KPIs, and all the accountabilities. Work is executed by our team in the Philippines to ensure it's affordable, and it's overseen by Mark and I here in Australia to deliver accuracy, reliability, and domain expertise. So our goal is to get you up and running in market and firing on all cylinders and make ourselves ideally redundant in around 18 months because we get it. No one wants to work forever with a consultant. You want marketing and positioning to get results, and we wanna show you how. So if this sounds like something that could work for your proptech, reach out. Email me at kylie@proptechguru.com.au or connect up on LinkedIn. Now, if you have enjoyed this episode of the PropTech Podcast, I would love you to tell all your friends or drop me a line either via email or LinkedIn or on our Facebook page. And you can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor, and Apple iTunes and anywhere good podcasts are heard. I would like to thank my podcast producer, the fabulous Charlie Hollins, podcast website editors, Jill Escudero and Shira Sexison, and our sponsors, HID, Digital Identification Solutions for your building, Direct Connect, making moving easy, Dynamic Methods, the name behind Forms Live, REI Forms Live, and Realworks, Easypay, making collecting payments easy for proptechs, and the PropTech Association Australia, Australia's industry body, which is supporting the flourishing proptech community. Now, if you're an Australian or New Zealand proptech who would like to be on the show, please drop me a line via LinkedIn or email kylie@proptechassociation.com.au. Thanks so much, everyone. Until next time, keep on propteching.
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