To America and back to India…
In the US, I did my MBA at Harvard Business School – 9/11 had just happened a few months back, and it was a tough time. Jobs were hard to come by, but I managed to get a job with GE Specialty Materials in Wilton, Connecticut. It was a very small office, giving me a chance to work very closely with the CEO, Bill Woodburn, and he became my mentor. Subsequently, he gave me multiple opportunities, such as co-leading the Lean Six Sigma initiative for GE along with him. It was Bill who asked me to move to India to be the CEO for GE’s infrastructure business in India. Eventually, I handled the GE Growth Team – a big initiative to ensure that India grew to a certain revenue level by 2010. My role, essentially, was to present the combined suite of GE products as a single offering to the Government, and sell to them.
By then, the entrepreneurial wave had started in India, and finally, I left GE to start a fintech start-up called ‘iTrust Financial Advisors’ with Kartik Verma, a classmate from business school. We raised some high-quality capital and ultimately sold the business to Karvy in 2011. On the back of that, we started PropTiger, along with a third co-founder Prashan Agarwal (who now heads Gaana) – an end-to-end service for consumers to help them buy new homes and also to help developers market their projects.
The NewsCorp association…
In November, 2014, we raised capital from NewsCorp. When their Global Head of Strategy, Raju Narisetti (Founder-Editor of HT Mint), first reached out, I wondered why NewsCorp would want to invest in our business. The connection had come through R Sukumar of Mint, for which we used to write columns. I later realized that NewsCorp owned REA Real Estate, Australia’s leading real estate player. One thing led to another, and I eventually met the CEO, Robert Thompson, and the CFO, Ajay Singh Bedi and the meeting went well. A few months later, Raju called me to say I should meet Rupert Murdoch, underlining that ‘If Rupert likes you, the deal’s done. If he doesn’t, the game is over.’ I wondered what to say to a man of his stature, especially at a meeting that looked like a life and death situation. What broke the ice was mention of his visit to Harvard Business School when I was a student, and we had a good conversation. The deal too went through. That was the start of the real Prop Tiger-Housing-Makaan journey because it gave us access to strategic capital.
When we bought Makaan, they always had eyes on Housing. By then, the controversy had started and we felt there was an opportunity, and went ahead though our investors had doubts. Since then, Housing has grown multifold. In terms of revenue, we did approximately Rs 140-142 crore in the last financial year and grew by about 20%+. Our marketing spends will be in the vicinity of Rs 40-50 crore over the next 18 months. Even post COVID, we advertised significantly, including during the IPL. We continued with our old campaign #GharDhoondnaKoiInseSeekhe which had Vicky Kaushal and Kiara Advani and just launched #YahaanSearchKhatamKaro featuring Rajkumar Rao and Manoj Bajpayee.
Focus on your action…
The Bhagvad Gita says, “Focus on your actions and outcomes will come.” That is my fundamental belief – keep doing the right thing with complete honesty and integrity, and success will automatically come.
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