Easing Real Estate deals with Tech-Intelligence

ZippServ is India’s first property risk assessment firm which provides online platform for comprehensive risk assessment for safeguarding real estate investments. The platform provides the right blend of professional experts for legal & civil engineering due-diligence, fraud & forgery detection and technology to ascertain encroachments & city planning violations, all under one roof.

Sudeep and Debashish founded ZippServ in December 2015, after; they both went through the harrowing experience while buying properties in Bangalore city. ZippServ’s vision is to remove the information asymmetry in real estate that exists today and empower property buyers to make the right choice by providing accurate city planning information and affordable professional advice, thereby also making the whole property buying experience a stress free one.
ZippServ’s proprietary map based data mining technology, process standardization and collaborative framework offers clients avail un-parallel quality of risk assessment. Customers get much better experience on Zippserv given transparent pricings, end-to-end service offerings, integrated logistics and SLA based online service fulfilment. It also offers services like are legal & civil engineering due diligence, fraud and forgery detection. The only thing the customer needs to do is to avail the right service at Zippserv and sit back and relax. , Zippserv launched a free Google Map based risk assessment tool v1.0 where property buyers and investors could check land survey details, boundary information, proximity to lake and storm water drains in matter of minutes. Till date ZippServ has saved customers an estimated sum of about Rs. 150 Cr. from risky investments.

Sudeep Anandapuram, CEO and founder of Zippserv holds a masters in Computer Engineering from Florida Atlantic University. He has more than 16 years experience in software industry and has worked in MNCs both in US and India. He was part of the core team of Ocular Networks. He later worked as a Software Architect at Tejas Networks where he led many projects from inception to successful completion with multiple cross-functional teams. He has excellent Product Management and execution skills

Debashish Hota COO & Co founder of ZippServ holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics & Communication from the renowned National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal. Mr. Hota has more than 12 years experience in the Networking/Defence Industry. He was a hardware architect at Tejas Networks where he has designed and developed products which have over 100000 successful deployments in India, South-East Asia and in North American Telcos. He has excellent vendor and supply chain management skills.

Below is the interview with the Management Team from Zippserv.

Who is your greatest inspiration & why?

Sudeep: While I have several role models in life, my greatest inspiration is a happy customer. For me, the spark you see in your customers eyes when you deliver solutions efficiently beating their expectations inspires me the most. Constantly setting higher standards and not being afraid to fail while trying innovative ideas is the key.

How did it all start? How were the initial 90 days like?

Sudeep: When I was in the US, it was very easy to buy properties. In 2002, after recceing about a dozen properties, I zeroed in on one in a week’s time. It was my first property and I was very excited. The backyard had a fantastic forest view and it was priced right. All the amenities were within a 2mile radius. The builder honoured the deadline of completing the pending work along with a few customization requests from my end. The keys were handed over promptly on the day they promised. All I had to do was to show up to the closing with the cheque to take possession of the house. But I always knew I wanted to return to India. I was still in the US when I decided to buy a property in Bengaluru. In 2005, I chose a home to buy in Bangalore. Despite paying a whopping amount, I needed to have somebody constantly on ground to do all the running around for me. Seeking the right professionals for legal and civil engineering due diligence was a challenge. The seller did not have some critical papers which had to be retrieved from government offices. Arranging for all this from US was a headache. I was honestly worried and scared if everything is being done right, especially since I had heard so many stories of NRIs being cheated in India. Somewhere along the way, I wished I could fall back on someone to help me take a more informed decision, someone who could source all the necessary documents at affordable prices especially when I was investing so much of money.

Debashish: When I booked my flat in Bannerghatta road, Bengaluru my wife and I were extremely nervous, worried. Googling for reviews about builder made things worse. What I realised is the internet reviews are mostly biased towards negativity. Since most the property documents including the approvals which the builder provided were in vernacular languages and I could make not make any sense out of it. I had to hire a legal professional who made me run from pillar to post. When I discussed the same with my father, I realised even he went through the same ordeal 20 years ago, it then dawned on me that this has remained a unsolved problem for generations and will remain so unless technology is brought into play.

Sudeep: So, in Feb of 2015, Debashish and I were just talking about the uncertainties an average home or plot buyers faces in India. This is when we decided to build a platform with the vision of being a gateway to all property transactions in India and making property buying a stress-free journey for the buyers. In about 3 months, we both put in our papers and decided to start up. ZippServ was finally launched in December 2015 with a princely sum of 25 Lakh. Since both of us were from Hi-Tec industry, it was a steep learning curve as the legal and civil engineering aspects were new to us. We went through a lot of iterations to get the product market fit.

What’s your philosophy when it comes to doing business?

The thing that comes to my mind is a famous quote buy Steve Jobs “Stay Hungry and Stay Foolish”. It helps you question the ways in which a problem have been solved, it makes you keep going beyond what you can even imagine and to be fearless to try out things that have never been attempted before.

What are your expectations from the Industry in 2017?

By and large I believe that the real estate sector should pickup with the interest rates going down. With RERA getting implemented soon, the secondary real estate market should see a spike in sales as prices of RERA compliant homes are bound to be high.

Did you manage to raise any funding?

We have raised funds mostly from family and a few angel investors. Zippserv offers service-as-a-product which is pre-packaged services with clearly defined SLAs where the entire service fulfilment happens online. Initially the professional partners were sceptic about such service delivery, but within a matter of few months they realized the efficiency Zippserv brought in to help build their business.

What would you like to achieve in the next 3 years?

Till date we only cater to less than 0.1% of the overall property transactions (over 3 lakh) taking place in Bengaluru. In fact Zippserv has spent very little in marketing either to drive sales. Given the fact that we have saved our present customers over rupees 150cr rupees, they have been our biggest patron by spreading the word among their friends and families. Zippserv plans to engage in various outward marketing activities over the next couple of quarters to create awareness and build a trusted brand. As we have championed this asset light and scalable model, we plan to scale this across multiple metros by next year.