'We aspire to be leading real estate portal in Pakistan,' Country Director Lamudi.pk

Saad Arshed is the Country Director for Lamudi.pk, a global online real estate platform, present in more than 22 countries with headquarters in Berlin. In his role, he oversees the overall business for Lamudi.pk, including functions such as sales, channel marketing, business development and public relations.
BR Research recently sat down with Arshed of Lamudi.pk to discuss about the company's performance, plans and methods. Arshed also threw light on dynamics of online real estate portals in Pakistan. Following are brief excerpts from the conversation.
BR Research: Take us through the journey of Lamudi.pk, how did all start?
Saad Arshed: I am an engineer by profession, after which I went to LUMs for MBA and then ended up here at Rocket Internet, the world's largest internet incubator. The company has operations spread over more than 50 countries carrying 100 plus ventures.
Lamudi.pk started in June 2013, and in less than a year's time we have a sizeable team of dedicated people in business development, marketing and finance. It was a new concept for Rocket Internet coming in the real estate classified business.
BRR: How has the journey been so far in terms of response and your own growth and development?
SA: It has been truly amazing thus far. Lamudi.pk is the best performing venture in Asia, which tells a lot about our early success. There are more than 35,000 properties available on our portal, and the number is increasing by the clock. We are at a stage, where we are able to add properties at a rapid pace of more than 15,000 a month on our portal.
We are already market leader in terms of growth but we are in our early phase and have to put in more efforts and energy.
BRR: How much direct competition do you face in real estate portal business? How stiff is the competition?
SA: The nearest competition we face is from zameen.com but that is a vertical player, there is also the horizontal player that is OLX. If you consider market share in terms of how many agents everyone has, we are pretty close to what the market leaders have at their disposal. Over 500 top agencies in Pakistan have signed up with us.
And in terms of number of units coming in, I think we are attracting 10,000 to 12,000 users on a daily basis.
BRR: How much of the traffic coming in materialises in actual deals? How does it compare with the industry average?
SA: We track each and every unit that comes in and every single lead that is generated--we have a very good conversion rate. It is benefiting the agencies and they are happy to continue working with us, with the kind of traffic that comes in and a healthy conversion rate. It works like a classified B2B model. Most of the real estate transactions are done by agencies and inherently it is not a C2C market.
We ensure that we protect the interests of our partners, ie the agents working with us. Each and every property that is processed goes through our systems--we have developed the quality of that listing which allows smooth operations. We have total control on content on our portal.
BRR: What differentiates you from your close competitors? Is the business model any different?
SA: What most real estate portals are doing is allowing free listing, whereas in our case it is 100 percent paid; proper quality content. And that is what the revenue model is and that is also the differentiating factor and our value proposition to the market.
We are not focussed on advertisement-based revenue model; our focus is on quality and being user friendly. We want to keep it simple for users, who can just come on the portal, search, if they like it; they will contact and not be bothered about disturbing flyer advertisements. We have designated slots for advertisement, but that is surely not our focus for generating revenue.
BRR: What is your gauge of business growth? Is it user engagement or the actual deal taking place?
SA: The idea is that the potential buyer ends up contacting your partner, as we run a classified model. We are trying to hit as many potential buyers and we track those who end up contacting our agencies. We spend massive amount of money on online advertisement to ensure our presence on top in relevant google searches.
BRR: Where are you concentrated in terms of cities across Pakistan?
SA: Currently, the focus is obviously the big three cities. But, we are slowly going to enter second tier cities such as Faisalabad, Multan and Hyderabad, etc.
BRR: What is the demand mix in terms of rental and purchase? Does it vary from region to region?
SA: It varies from city to city. For instance, in Karachi, there is more demand for apartments and rentals, while in Lahore the focus is more on plot sales and purchases. The favourite hot spots are the usual big guns such as DHA and Bahria. The hot property the agencies want to trade would naturally be in the posh areas. But, we do want agencies to trade in other areas as well just to add variety to our offer. Down the road, when we have more cities, we will have more variety.
BRR: Is there a visible difference in terms of pricing between Karachi and Lahore?
SA: There is a visible difference in terms of inventory and inventory type on offer and in demand. There is a lot of concentration to Lahore of late in terms of demand. In terms of pricing, Lahore property prices have seen a huge jump. But, Karachi is not that far behind. Most of the listings are for potential investment due to low rental yields in Pakistan.
BRR: What are your targets in the medium term? Do you plan to add new lines to the current business model?
SA: Our target is to become Pakistan's' leading real estate portal. Our biggest challenge is to get quality content on our portal, for which purpose we educate our partners. The better the quality, the greater the chances are to convert the potential into real business.
We have the capacity in our system to be the number one in Pakistan in the longer run. Rocket Internet is focussed towards Pakistan, which is a big boost for us.