The Indian Startup

We interviewed Sangeeta Venkat and Venkat Kandaswamy about their startup ApartmentAdda.com

How would you describe your startup to a layman?

ApartmentAdda is a single online platform for Apartment Residents and Association Committee – to communicate among themselves and manage their Apartment Complex.

Today 65% of the home-owning middle-class-and-above demographic in large Indian cities lives in an Apartment, leads a very busy work life, is often globetrotting, and is connected by internet or SMS. These apartment residents seek to utilize technology for a convenient way of handling residential issues and participating in community initiatives. ApartmentAdda.com is the solution for them.

What gave you the idea to create ApartmentAdda.com? When did you start?

It all started after we bought an apartment in Bangalore in early 2007. We were the 6th family to move in and every day was an adventure in getting the basic amenities in place. We formed a managing committee to get things done – like pushing the builder for timely completion of works and to regulate work timings for carpenters – because they were hammering our peace out even at midnight!

We started with a yahoogroup for owners and with more residents moving in, an Orkut community emerged for fun interaction, a blog for buy-sell notices, another yahoogroup for the managing committee, and yet another for tenants! Confusion prevailed – important information did not reach everyone effectively, friendly chit-chats were mixed up with serious complaints; we were not even sure if a group member belonged to our community at all!

Once our Owners’ Association was formed, we noticed that too many precious weekend hours were being spent in apartment management. We actively looked for an easy online tool to manage an apartment complex – like tracking complaints, dues, expenses, long-running issues etc but there were none at that time. This was in mid 2008.

All these pain points led to the creation of ApartmentAdda – a single online platform that caters to all the communication and management needs of an online community. We launched ApartmentAdda in November 2008. The residents of our complex were adventurous to try out the new platform – tracking maintenance dues, expenses, and even conducting their election online – Oasis Breeze perhaps might be the first apartment complex in India to conduct an online secret ballot.

Can you provide me some details about the founders backgrounds as well as their roles at the company?

ApartmentAdda was founded by Venkat Kandaswamy and Sangeeta Venkat.

Venkat has over 11 years experience in developing web applications, high performance and high availability applications. He is also a usability expert with keen interest in easy-to-use and inclusive designs. ApartmentAdda’s UI is designed to be used by a cross-section of users – from tech savvy users to beginners with the www – and is highly appreciated for its ease of use and optimal layout.

Venkat takes care of the design, development and operations of the portal.

Sangeeta has over 10 years experience in consulting for financial applications. She is also an active Management Committee member of her apartment complex, and has helped design the accounting package in ApartmentAdda which is highly appreciated for the flexibility and intuitiveness – it is used with ease by Association Treasurers to Estate Managers.

Sangeeta is in charge of the functional specifications, user acceptance tests, helping with business development, and acts as the gatekeeper against any unwanted-but-cool product feature.

Who is your role model or inspiration? Any successful entrepreneurs whose work you follow closely?

Our benchmark and inspiration is Steve Jobs & Steve Woznaik’s creation – Apple.

* Apple has created new industries – the PC industry, online music store and now the Mobile Apps
* Apple perhaps was the first company to take user interface and design seriously.
* Apple has managed to create die-hard fans.

We strive to be the Apple in our industry.

Do you have any interesting bootstrapping stories/tips that you can share with us?

We started ApartmentAdda as a sole-proprietorship. We spent many hours at the security gates of apartments, showed demos, answered many questions, and finally we won a premium customer. The great moment arrived when we were to receive our first check – and the Association Committee objected to drawing check in the name of an individual – as advised by their auditor. We managed to convince them eventually, with the assurance that we will be registering a company soon. We are glad to have fulfilled that promise to our first premium customer, with the recent registration of 3Five8 Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Can you describe some of the main features of ApartmentAdda? Is there any particular feature that has had very positive response? What are the extra features that are availaible to premium accounts?

ApartmentAdda’s Maintenance Fee Tracker has scored high with our customers. Tracking the dues, the receipts, fines etc. is a tedious process, usually accomplished using multiple documents. In most cases it is done by the Association Committee – comprised of volunteer residents who spend time on weekends. Managing finances is only one of the thousand other tasks they have to do – coordinating with the builder to get the promised work delivered, getting the legal paperwork done for the property, figuring out how to raise funds for the next community initiative etc. They appreciate the time ApartmentAdda saves them and the smoothness of the whole operation.

The second most appreciated tool is the Complaint Box. Any resident can raise complaint for their flat, which is visible to all other members of their flat. This means that the owner of a tenanted flat can see from anywhere in the world, what are the defects arising in his flat and how those are being fixed. Also, common complaints can be raised as community complaints which get coordinated effort from everyone to resolve efficiently.

Furthermore all our premium applications are integrated with SMS. This keeps even the non tech-savvy residents in the fold – as they get the important alerts like dues, service interruptions, or meeting reminders. Also ApartmentAdda SMS do not carry any nagging advertisements.

We encourage readers to visit our features page for an entire list of premium features and their descriptions.

Do your customers experience a learning curve in using ApartmentAdda? How do you handle customer service

Right from the beginning our goal was to build an easy-to-use online tool and we have been quite successful on this front. As we speak, senior citizens, estate managers are using ApartmentAdda and are finding it very easy to navigate the pages. We have an elegant dashboard design which summarizes the activities in each of the applications like forum, notice board, complaint box etc. All pages are only two levels deep.

We offer email support for our basic customers and phone support for our premium customers. Also we earnestly maintain our FAQs which answer most of the questions our customers have.

What is your revenue model? How has your success been in converting free accounts to premium ones?

We have an online subscription model – where the Association Office pays ApartmentAdda for using the Premium LITE or Premium PRO packages. We charge based on the number of flats – the charge being Rs.75 per flat per year for Premium LITE and Rs.100 per flat per year for Premium PRO. There is also a BASIC package which is free of cost.

The interesting fact we observed is – the associations who are serious about using ApartmentAdda directly opt for the Premium packages. The communities who are yet to form an association are the ones who are on Basic now and they have already shown interest in using our Premium tools once they form the association.

How do you advertise your product? Do you focus on online or offline advertising? Which advertising methods have given you the best results?

We approach Residents’ Associations directly, offline as well as online. Some curiosity traffic comes via search engines and our blog. We also frequently present onsite demos to prospective customers which generates quite some excitement. This also creates word-of-mouth advertising, which has given the best results thus far. Almost all serious users have reported hearing about ApartmentAdda from another user or from someone who saw the demo last weekend.

Is there any other information that you would like to share with us?

We would like to thank TheIndianStartup for the interview and would like to wish all the best in your endeavor to build the eco system of entrepreneurs.

My views

ApartmentAdda is definitely a unique service with an easy to use interface should be accessible to even basic computer users.  Their Freemium business model offers a lot of functionality at even its base level so that there are no barriers for apartment owners interested in using their service while their premium features provide compelling reasons for existing users to upgrade.

Venkat is an active member & blogger at theindianstartup.com’s community of entrepreneurs. Other members can see his profile here. If you have any questions for the ApartmentAdda team, please post them on his profile wire or in the comments below.