Real estate listings are almost always a profitable venture online, and almost always supported by advertising. But IndiaProperty.com is unique in its ability to sell subscriptions on both its B2B and B2C sides, in part because of its good fortune of launching during a boom in India’s real estate market. CEO Ganesh Vasudevan spoke to us about how the site is selling individual and group subscriptions to construction companies and real estate sellers, as well as upselling consumers into AssistedProperty.com, a search service that helps Indians living abroad vet and buy property in India. Plus, given Vasudevan’s experience with dating sites, this is a great Case Study for anyone interested in A/B test results on page design and button color, or how to maximize SEO and SEM.
Company Profile
Founded: 2006
No. of Publications: 2
Employees: 400 full-time
Business Model: Hybrid — subscriptions, advertising, events, a la carte services
Paying Subscribers: 2400 companies for IndiaProperty.com, 200 consumers for AssistedProperty.com.
Location: Chennai, India
Website: http://www.indiaproperty.com
http://www.assistedproperty.com/
Target Market
On the B2B side, IndiaProperty.com’s target market consists of sellers, builders and building agents looking to sell newly constructed property in India’s booming real estate market in 10 major markets: Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kerala, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chandigarh, Pune and Kolkata. (Some of these locations are major cities, some entire states.) In a real departure from U.S. practice, IndiaProperty positions and sells its real estate listings on a subscription basis. In some respects, this is just a semantic difference. However, unlike advertising, subscriptions can auto-renew, and that’s exactly what IndiaProperty does. There’s subtle genius in this approach.
While viewing listings are free for consumers, IndiaProperty.com also monetizes its consumer audience through AssistedProperty.com. AssistedProperty.com targets Indians and ex-pats, or Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), living abroad. Most of them are males 28-year-old or older or females 24-years-old or older who have a college education and looking to purchase a home in India. They may be single or married, but are often busy professionals, and therefore, because of time and location, don’t have the time to physically inspect a location or property on their own.
Content
IndiaProperty.com’s content far exceeds the listing information and photos of most real estate listing sites. The site allows sellers, builders and renters to incorporate videos into their listings, and even has a “social” component that allows consumers to follow builders much like they can follow companies on LinkedIn. This is a value-add for consumers since large apartment complexes will sometimes sell out units before the properties are even finished. In addition, builders can purchase the right to email or SMS blast prospects (this is sold as an upsell during the subscription process).
The site’s mobile app works on “augmented reality” and location-specific marketing using GPS technology. In short, consumers can point their smartphone in any direction within the site’s 10 major markets, and properties that match their requirements will pop up on screen.
The site also has a highly-optimized mobile site. Anyone interested in creating a great mobile website should definitely check it out at http://m.indiaproperty.com/index.php (it will look more impressive when viewed on a mobile screen than your desktop).
The site is pay-worthy for construction builders, sellers and agents because every consumer is hand-held through the search process by IndiaProperty staff. The staff also verifies various sellers, the address of property whenever possible (for AssistedProperty subscribers), and will post verified details, such as whether the 4th floor apartment in the building has a garden view or east-facing entrance (important for vastu, the Indian equivalent to feng shui). Unlike social media, site visitors on IndiaProperty are seriously seeking to buy property and therefore, are more qualified leads for the sellers. And the cost is more effective for sellers and builders than building and driving traffic to their own websites.
IndiaProperty.com adds about 4,000 to 5,000 listings every day. Many of these listing opportunities are purchased in bulk by the builders and sellers, who have multiple units available in multiple buildings. Listings stay live for two months unless they are renewed by the seller or taken down in the case of a sale.
Most of the content is user-generated by the sellers and builders; sellers are given a set of tools to create a listing and map it, and the process usually takes less than 30 seconds. For new construction, IndiaProperty reviews the builder and includes its track record as part of the listing.
AssistedProperty.com
AssistedProperty.com is a paid subscription service available for property buyers, and it basically assists a property buyer in their search. The service was born out of the demand of NRIs who were living abroad and unable to vet a property, and is currently only available in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The AssistedProperty team will visit a property for sale for the buyer and get videos of the locality, references for the builders and other information the buyer wants to make a decision.
Revenues
While Vasudevan could not disclose actual revenues, he did say that IndiaProperty.com was the top real estate portal in the country, with 450,000 listings for sale and 50,000 for rent. He also said that the majority of revenues were from the B2B subscription side (sellers and builders).
The site’s freemium model offers sellers and builders with a number of subscription plans. Individual plan options are as follows:
The site also sells enterprise packages to builders and sellers with multiple properties. These are priced by the size of the company and the number of listings wanted (some sellers want 50-100 listings). The smallest package is 3 lakhs (~$20,000) and the largest is 1.3 crores ($200,000/year).
All individual subscriptions are on auto-renew. The B2B subscriptions that have preferred pricing for groups are also on auto-renew most of the time (IndiaProperty employs some discretion in its auto-renew policies given the customized pricing it offers).
AssistedProperty.com
AssistedProperty.com’s services are sold in two subscription packages and priced in dollars because the target market is NRIs, many of which live in the US:
The company tries to complete a search with three months, and if not, will sell a second three-month term at a reduced rate.
Marketing Tactics
IndiaProperty.com engages in heavy digital marketing tactics to get traffic, as well as non-digital advertising and promotions.
SEO + SEM
Of the site’s 1.4 million site visitors each month, 82% is from within India and 18% is from abroad (the US, UK and Persian Gulf states, main residences for NRIs).
51% of the site’s traffic is the result of paid search marketing tactics, mainly AdWords through Google. Of the remaining 49%, most of it is direct, but a sizeable portion comes through Google.
The site definitely uses SEO best practices (link to Toolkit), including having several different footers for each major real estate market with that market’s name.
The site will also advertise on financial websites, newspaper websites, investment websites, About 15-20% of IndiaProperty’s marketing budget goes to this advertising, although Vasudevan says contextual text often drives more traffic than images and banner ads.
Offline Advertising & Trade Shows
Because most consumers in India buy a car before they buy a property, IndiaProperty does a significant amount of advertising via radio during “drive time.”
The site has also created 20 live events called “Garha Pravesh,” Hindi for Housewarming, three of which were held in the US. During these exhibitions, builders showcase their new constructions. Every attendee is assigned a QR code upon registration, which is loaded with a phone number and email address, and every exhibitor gets a tablet application that lets them scan the QR codes. Exhibitors can then tag leads as hot or cold and contact them later. IndiaProperty will also pitch AssistedProperty after attendees finish viewing all the booths.
Social Media
India Property has a strong presence across various social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+, all of which help build the site’s brand and make it the top real estate portal for India.
Conversion Tactics
IndiaProperty.com requires an email registration for any seller who wants to list a property (in fact, the seller needs to register before being able to even see the plans and pricing page).
The site allows one free listing (without taking a credit card) and also offers free white papers to sellers. These white papers are produced in-house by a 4-member team for 120 micro-markets (such as the Koramangala neighborhood of Bangalore). Buyers can also engage with IndiaProperty through online chat.
Given Vasudevan’s background with dating sites, the site A/B tests heavily, everything from the placement of a button to the copy. These tests allowed IndiaProperty to discover that showing 15 listings as opposed to 10 tripled the number of customers that filled out a form. And like we’ve discussed before, blue buttons outperform orange ones. Vasudevan attributes this to the fact that blue engenders trust in clients and consumers.
Group Sales
Sales leads for enterprise accounts are generated in-house by IndiaProperty’s large sales force that numbers in the hundreds. The sales research team will often put together marketing pitches for builders with an online marketing solution. They’ll also engage in a lot of telesales and local marketing through events. The site also conducts a lot of inbound marketing through their free whitepaper downloads. Sales are often closed via email or phone.
Payment Processing
IndiaProperty takes Visa and Mastercard, but also offers a service called Equated Monthly Installments, For major accounts, India Property is willing to act like a bank, and credit an account but charge a 5% interest rate on monthly installments. This works well since in India, most credit cards charge a 33-36% interest rate, and personal loans carry a 14-15% interest rate.
Retention Tactics
Vasudevan reports that 75-80% of customers renew their services with IndiaProperty. Some customers who have been with the site for four to five years, and the median lifetime is two to three years.
Their major retention tactic is a high ROI for a client’s marketing spend. The site will also throw in a few goodies, like advice on pricing, specific liquidation strategies, access to qualified customer basis.
Cross-Sell/Upsells
While the silver and gold subscription plans don’t include the SMS and email blast features, subscribers are presented with the option to add them on to their package during the checkout for an additional amount (Rs. 1000 for the email blast and Rs.2500 for the SMS blast).
The site also has its own internal PPC function that lets individual and enterprise sellers be featured as a “Property of the Day” (prices range from Rs. 200-300). And entire building project can be promoted to consumers via SMS for Rs. 5000 — 10,000. In addition, sellers and builders can set up display banner ad that flash only when a consumer enters a key search term, such as Koramangala, a trendy neighborhood in Bangalore.
About Ganesh Vasudevan
Ganesh Vasudevan was working for BharatMatrimony.com in 2006, one of India’s most popular dating and matrimonial sites, and IndiaProperty’s parent company until recently. Meanwhile, just as internet marketing was booming, so was Indian real estate. In 2011, the company decided to invest resources in IndiaProperty.com, feeling the time was right.
His biggest surprise has been the pace of adoption for mobile in India. “We started developing a mobile app just because we just wanted to have a mobile presence, but the kind of traffic we got, I really jumped off my seat,” he says.
Since there are plenty of free services out there, Vasudevan says his best advice to other paid sites is to “figure out what specific need of the consumer is being addressed and articulate it very sharply.” Also, along with his observation about the growth of mobile, he advises that media sites learn to “serve [content] at the most appropriate time that [consumers] need the service.”
Vendors & Technology
IndiaProperty manages a number of functions in house, including web design & development, email management and content management.
Hosting — Tata Communications Limited; Rackspace Inc.
http://www.tatacommunications.com/
https://www.rackspace.com/
Payment processing — HDFC Bank payment gateway.
http://www.hdfcbank.com/sme/sme-details?id=guzh6m0i
Web design –In house and Kutung
www.kutung.com
Creative agency — Rubecon Comm
http://www.rubeconcreative.com/
Analytics –Xerago
www.xerago.com
Media planning — RKSwamy Media Group
www.rkswamymedia.com
Mobile application development — npcompete Technologies Pvt Ltd
www.npcompete.com
Insider Analysis
Certainly by now you see the beauty of IndiaPropety’s business model. Advertising packages are positioned as subscriptions, setting the stage for long-term advertiser relationships, particularly since the subscriptions auto-renew. Even better these advertiser/subscribers input most of the content on the site themselves. The site is impressive given its market dominance, which is firmly rooted in SEO and SEM best practices and a clear value proposition to its dual audiences: real estate sellers and builders and consumer buyers. Even though the site can seem very busy, we appreciate the company’s reliance on testing and data to help guide design and user experience.
But what we really like is the company’s ability to think outside of the box and answer the needs of its audience, from creating its own micro-loan payment feature to launching AssistedProperty.com for its international audience. We don’t know of any other real estate listing site willing to be this creative and innovative. And AssistedProperty.com is extremely interesting on its own merits, because it shows how to add value to free content. By acting as the “eyes and ears” of its expat subscribers, who are by necessity trying to purchase from a distance, the company pleases its advertisers, pleases its customers and generates new revenue in a highly leveraged fashion.
While there’s little room for improvement, the site could augment its marketing tactics a bit. Given the way most people buy property, a formal word-of-mouth referral program would likely be highly successful.
