May 4: There has always been a huge gap between the owner’s and The Tenant’s expectations and the actual product available in the market. An owner’s top requirements are Transparency and the Maintenance of the property while the tenant’s top priority is: Hygienic living space and the convenience of Bundled Services. Co-living, student Housing, or Multi-tenant living is now becoming an organized market in India. More than 100 players evolved in this domain in the last 7 years. Nestaway was the first to start this back in 2015. However, the requirements of the millennials have changed now, they are looking for private rooms, and they are ready to spend more on their rental bills. Therefore, the organized rental market must evolve continuously. This problem is being solved by HelloWorld under the leadership of Mr. Saurav Aggarwal who has recently been awarded as the “Most prominent Industry Expert – 2022, Co-living & Student Housing Category”.
During the pandemic times, the sector of organized rental has seen some worse times. Saurav and his company were at the lowest occupancy and collection rates. We realized the continuous flow of communication and strong relationship building was two key factors through which we could sustain during the COVID times. The biggest challenge was to keep an entire team motivated and to keep all stakeholders like vendors, owners and tenants satisfied without hampering services. Due to the rise in demand for private rooms, the supply of organized rooms may face a shortfall in coming times and due to this demand and supply gap, prices may increase. Saurav and his company HelloWorld believe that the organized rental market will evolve in a bigger and different way. The models of doing business will change. tenant, Owner, and operator behaviour will change. In the coming days, not the fixed rents but the service level and the transparency will play a major role in succeeding this business. As the market is evolving and moving towards the technology era, the demand for transparency and expectations of service delivery levels are going up. Thus, HelloWorld as a team is continuously working on product enhancement like the owner dashboard for better transparency and efficiency improvement. They have developed a tenant application for fast service resolution
As of now, less than 1% of the total households who are living on rentals are using the services of organized players. Since the Indian rental market is evolving very fast and now builders are also aware of words like multi-tenant living, student housing, and co-living, both are collaborating to create new asset classes which may provide higher yield on investments to real estate buyers.
According to Saurav, the use of technology platforms to optimize the cost of business operations. HelloWorld uses forecasting and prediction methods to deal with uncertainties that arise due to external factors like COVID. He also opines that a strong & engaged relationship with all stakeholders is key to good leadership. It is important to create an environment where: people can make decisions with confidence, respect hierarchy, be good friends with each other even outside of work, and put the company over team and team over self. Saurav always believes in investing time in people and relationships to develop a self-motivating and driving Environment.
Vijay Singh
