The technology-based home-service provider wants to organise the residential home construction market
By Mrinmoy Bhattacharjee
Bengaluru-based startup Housejoy has stepped up its game. From being an on-demand home services provider, it has transformed into a residential turnkey contractor by undertaking construction, renovation, and interior services. With a sales pitch of ‘Build Your Dream Home in 144 days’, the company is positioning itself as a platform that offers a “credible” residential construction experience in contrast to what customers conventionally encounter in the realty space.
The company’s upstream movement – from services to construction – is prompted by the unorganised and fragmented state of the domestic construction market, where home dreamers have to battle with issues of reliability, timeliness, transparency, and quality with local contractors and consultants.
“Housejoy solves all of those and offers customers not only convenience but also a brand to trust while building their dream home. Our new business line will help solve the problem of finding and managing virtuous home builders and interior decorators. We are enabling our customers to get a complete home solution, from building to architecture and execution. All the processes, from plan approval to handover, shall be seamlessly tracked and managed by Housejoy professionals,” says the company’s CEO Saran Chatterjee. “Our speed of execution is what sets us apart from other players in the market. We build houses in 144 days after design completion, from execution start to handover, for a typical G+1, 2500-3000 sft house,” he avers.
Chatterjee’s optimism about Housejoy’s new business stems from the country’s home construction market, which he says is pegged at $15-20 billion and projected to be $40 billion in the next five years. “In a city like Bengaluru, over one lakh individual land units get registered each year. The market comprises of people building new homes or tearing down old ones and rebuilding. The market is robust, and we are seeing 500-plus leads a month in Bengaluru and Hyderabad alone,” he observes. The company has embarked on its turnkey solutions business by launching in these two south Indian cities, pinning hopes around their positive outlook. In the next six months, Chatterjee hints, Housejoy’s service may expand to the periphery of cities like Chennai, Pune, Mysuru, and Indore.
Elaborating about the specific services, Chatterjee says, “Under our construction services, a customer can avail facilities that would include property inspection, designing, plan approval, procurement of raw material, and building as per the plan. The entire project schedule is created in such a way that a customer can review and track the activity from an app, and also through CCTV which will be installed at the site. Customers can view and check the development of their construction from anywhere in the world.” Under interior and renovation, Chatterjee adds, the company will tap into its pool of “highly” qualified architects and designers to offer property inspection, planning, procurement of raw material and custom design services.
He also informs that the company has tied up with manufacturers and material distributors in each city. “We have a stringent selection process in place to figure out reliable and quality suppliers for the projects. Besides, we are on the lookout for more vendors for the latest products and technologies, so that we can service our fast-growing operations.”
Discussing the project pipeline, the Housejoy CEO states, “The concept model has been successfully proofed as we have completed 150-plus projects in the renovation, while 50-plus projects are in the execution phase for individual home construction. The company is looking to reach a run rate of 20 signed projects per month, and a total target of 100 construction projects in execution by December 2019.”
