Generation Start-up: This PropTech platform uses AI to offer competitive edge to brokers

The Covid-19 pandemic has hastened the technological transformation of varied sectors and Dubai’s property market has joined the bandwagon.

Cashing found in on the need for change and operational proficiency among agents in the market, property technology platform Overwrite was set up in the UAE found in the third quarter of this past year. It allows property brokers to automate the task of writing specific, search-optimised and informative property marketing descriptions.

“We automate what offers thus far been a good manual task. Real estate agents take pleasure in networking, facilitating viewings for clientele and closing deals. A lot of them do not really enjoy the administrative feature of the job, which involves them writing house descriptions [while] seated behind a pc,” says Ayman Alashkar, 42, founder and chief executive of Overwrite.

“By avoiding this unpleasant task, they are able to save time, keep your charges down and concentrate on higher-value tasks.”

The start-up was self-funded by the founder, who commenced to handle research and develop the idea in 2018 before taking it to advertise to test in the next year. Mr Alashkar proven the business at the Dubai International Financial Center in the center of last year and it raised a token sum of $100,000 in a seed-funding spherical in the 3rd quarter.

“We are now actively engaged with Dubai-based angel investors and ultra-high-net-worth buyers to improve funding that is necessary for our global growth,” Mr Alashkar, a Briton with a 20-time career in the organization property industry, tells The National.

“We aim to generate 12.5 % returns for investors who participate in this round over a five-year horizon.”

Four out of seven emirates in the UAE recorded real estate transactions worth Dh68.6 billion ($18.52bn) found in the first quarter of this year, an indicator that the marketplace is bouncing backside from a good coronavirus-induced slowdown.

Many UAE brokers have signed up as customers in the PropTech platform during the past six months, including Espace Real Estate, Provident Real Estate, Luxury Property and Berkshire Hathaway Homes.

“We managed to reach 40 % of the approximately 2,400 brokers on the Dubai market. We happen to be auto-writing 20 % of posted listing activity within the first of all 12 a few months of the prototype variation going live. The size of our target market is growing, which is allowing our expansion,” says Mr Alashkar, who has already established stints at real estate advisory company Colliers International and Emirates NBD.

Besides posting new listings, agents can also work with Overwrite to refresh existing listings. For a house agency, this efficiency could be applied at level to eliminate human error and optimise human resources to focus on revenue generation.

“For a long time, I could not know how some agencies advertised their properties so lackadaisically, using stale, often copy-paste marketing content. Their on-line listings will be their digital ‘shop windows’ to the world yet so many of them happen to be either poorly written, error-laden or utterly unengaging. Instead of attracting leads, they appeared to have the opposite result,” says Mr Alashkar.

On average, a broker takes about 15 to 20 minutes to create a property description. Overwrite reduces that to 1 minute for a well-accustomed customer. The start-up uses artificial cleverness with natural words processing to immediately auto-write a lot more than 1.5 billion property advertising descriptions.

“Among the core features of Overwrite is engaging the reader and prompting a call to action. A user could be more inclined to call an agent who pays focus on detail in a house description than person who copy-pastes from a stale template. We help agents generate more qualified prospects by differentiating their listing from others,” says Mr Alashkar.

Overwrite offers three enterprise subscription plans for little, medium and large property brokers.

The plans for little and medium-sized agencies are priced at $50 and $130 per month, respectively, while the top-tier plan for larger agencies costs $250 per month. The third plan gives agencies usage of unlimited users and possesses been the most popular, according to Mr Alashkar.

A person plan costs $10 a month. With a 12-month subscription, users meet the criteria to 1 free month of provider. All users also receive a seven-day free trial.

“I am constantly searching for new technology that may make the business better. PropTech gives our people an opportunity to leverage their time in more profitable directions. It can increase productivity and margins,” says John Lyons, managing director of Espace Real Estate.

“Overwrite is an example of how ground breaking tech can augment recruiting and streamline daily functions within our agency.”

The start-up currently has three full-time employees and hires freelancers whenever their skills are required.

“[That is how] I have been in a position to launch a good start-up on a good bootstrap spending plan without incurring all of the hard costs that may weigh on a fresh organization”, says Mr Alashkar, who is a certified AI for business execution strategist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He is also a mathematics graduate of Queen Mary University, University of London, and holds a master's level in real estate investment and production from the University of Browsing.

He ideas to expand Overwrite to different established property market segments globally, you start with the UK. The team will grow in line with the start-up’s market penetration program.

“I use Overwrite for all my listings. I was impressed with the selection and aspect in the descriptions, which it generates for me personally,” says Sergo Sirbiladze, a leasing consultant with Espace Real Estate.

“I enter the main element information regarding my listing and within seconds, I have an array of property descriptions to decide on that capture all of the selling factors of the house. The language is really good; not the same as all the other listings you read, plus I do not need to check on it for spelling flaws, so it saves me time.”

Listing the issues of setting up businesses amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Alashkar says you may still find a few in the UAE home industry who are resilient to change.

“When you are doing something groundbreaking, that is clearly a challenge.”

Another exciting problem has been the integration of the merchandise with different systems, the entrepreneur says.

"But we continue steadily to work and spend money on that because it’s portion of our key expansion strategies," he says.