UrbanAce believes that in property marketing, the role of agents remain irreplaceable. Here is how they aims to adjust it to the digital era

Indonesia has seen the rise of several property tech startups such as Rumah123 and Rumah.com, which offers services in the form of a property listing portal.

To differentiate from the rest, West Jakarta-based property tech startup UrbanAce offers service that integrates the online and offline aspect of property marketing. In addition to providing a property listing portal, the startup also provide real estate agency service for its customers.

In an interview with e27, CEO and Founder Ronny Wuisa refers to their business as a tech-enabled real estate agency.

“We want to help property agents serve their customers faster, more efficient, and better. For many years, property marketing is heavily dependent on human resources; in selling and marketing properties, agents rely on the information stored in their mind and their agenda. They are drowning in information and tasks as they are trying to do everything manually,” Wuisan explains.

“These agents are amazing, but as human beings, they certainly have limitations,” he stresses.

The UrbanAce platform itself consists of a website for customers to check available listings, and a mobile app for property agents to manage their work –from arranging meetings with clients and property owners to searching for property database.

The startup also runs UrbanAce Academy, a training programme for individuals who want to join the company as property agents. The training programme is mandatory for both seasoned and newbie agents.

Due to the difference in how the startup is running its business, UrbanAce chooses to not see other property startups such as Rumah123 and Rumah.com as its competitor. Instead, it prefers to see them as a complement to its services.

“They have gathered hundreds of thousands of listings after years of operating in Indonesia; UrbanAce will never be able to gather that many in our own time,” Wuisan says.

“[But] UrbanAce has a strategic position as it has access to information on who the clients are, the kind of property that they are looking for, and their budget. Once you secure these three points of information, you only need to search for the property itself. And only real estate agents have those information,” he adds.

Founded in 2016, UrbanAce has just launched its service formally in May this year. However, the startup has secured around 300 individual property agents working for them, with 35 people running the company itself.

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It also named leading Indonesian software engineer Andoko Chandra as tech advisor.

The startup has also raised its seed funding round from several undisclosed angel investors.

Go-Jek, the inspiration

 

Prior to founding UrbanAce, Wuisan has had years of experience in the property sector.

A graduate of the engineering school at Petra University in Surabaya and the Swiss Hotel School Les Roches in Switzerland, he was previously the associate director of sales at sales management platform Trivio and COO at property marketing startup PROJEK. He had also secured executive positions at companies such as Danone Aqua Indonesia and Supernova Flexible Packagings.

In founding UrbanAce, like many young entrepreneurs in Indonesian tech scene, he was inspired by ride-hailing unicorn Go-Jek.

One day, Wuisan took a ride home using Go-Jek’s motorbike taxi service. When they arrived at the destination, the driver asked if he can wait in front of Wuisan’s home until the traffic jam eased.

The two then spent a moment talking, and the driver said something that intrigued Wuisan.

“He picked up his phone and said, ‘Isn’t it amazing, that something so small such as this thing has my whole family’s livelihood depend on it?’” he explains.

Similar to Go-Jek and other ride-hailing platform, UrbanAce also implements a rating system to help improve property agents’ services. If a property agent continuously received low ratings, he or she will be sent to participate in training programmes again.

“If we can easily rate ojek drivers … then why can’t why do it in this business, where people buy something they might only buy once in their lifetime?” Wuisan says, adding that the average Indonesians buy property once every ten years.

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Data is the future, and the future comes today

 

Prior to the existence of platforms such as UrbanAce, meetings between property agents and clients had always been a very discreet process, which Wuisan describes as “only God, the agent, and the client” know what was being discussed in it.

But in the era of data analytics, such things are not acceptable anymore.

UrbanAce makes it compulsory for their agents to submit notes of their conversation with clients following a meeting, particularly information on the kind of property that clients are looking for.

“This is the era of data … We want to know how many customers are discussing buying houses in Pondok Indah, how many customers are buying apartments for their children who are studying abroad,” Wuisan says.

According to the CEO, the information helps the startup forecast trend and will eventually open new business opportunities for agents. It can also help agents offer clients alternatives based on the information.

For the year 2018, UrbanAce is planning to strengthen its presence in Greater Jakarta Area by recruiting more agents with expertise on property business in the area. They are also looking forward to launch new features such as one that enables customers to schedule a visit to a property.

In the long run, the startup aims to do its IPO in the fifth or sixth year of its operations.

“Property marketing is a very fragmented business, unlike e-commerce. The battle in the e-commerce sector is more fierce than in property tech, as they are fighting for a bigger piece of the cake. In the property sector, it is impossible for one company to rule the sector on a national scale, because every city have their own expert [property agents],” Wuisan closes.

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Image Credit: UrbanAce

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