Different does real estate right by growing its SL talent
Different Technologies, an Australian start-up backed by Australia’s venture capital firm, AirTree Venture and Silicon Valley’s Foundation Capital, is making a firm commitment to Sri Lanka by doubling its investments over the next few years and aggressively hiring local talent.
Ruwin Perera, Co-Founder/CEO recently told media that the company, which is a full service property management agency reaffirmed its commitment to Sri Lanka by doubling its investment in the country through a multi-million dollar investment in its Colombo office, making senior personnel hires, and moving key operational functions, including real-time customer management, customer experience, maintenance, and supplier relationships, to this office. The company was co-founded by Mina Radhakrishnan the former Global Head of Product for Uber, and she’s also Mr. Perera’s wife.
Different leverages technology and great people to redefine property management in Australia. Property management is essentially organising and managing the letting of commercial, residential or retail properties on behalf of their owners. “Different does things, differently, by looking at existing industry processes, making them more efficient by keeping things that work well and discarding those that don’t, and then creating tech to automate those tasks that can be done more efficiently by technology than by humans,” Mr. Perera said. The company has built apps which give tenants a way to easily lodge problems in the property that need to be fixed, as well as pay rent. Owners, on the other hand, can review previous transactions via their dedicated web application. As an example, the Tenant App allows tenants to take pictures of maintenance issues at the property and send it through to the owner for approval within seconds and then have visibility over the status of this request, whereas previously they’d have to call the property manager, send an email with pictures, and then keep calling to find out the status of their maintenance request.
The property management market is valued at AU$ 4 billion and is primarily an offline, relationship based industry. “This overreliance on people can be frustrating for both owners and tenants for a number of reasons, including poor response times, key personnel going on leave, and lack of real-time access to portfolio statements,” Mr. Perera explained. He told the Business Times that Different has the technology to empower and change how consumers live and that they deal in more smarter, faster reliable property management.
The company has hired experienced entrepreneur, Rukmankan Sivaloganathan, who held senior positions at HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank in Sri Lanka and Singapore before returning to Sri Lanka to start his own companies, as its Country Head, Sri Lanka. “Rukmankan has an MBA from INSEAD and brings on board his entrepreneurial zeal, knowledge of the local market, strategic insight, and ability to execute to help build a world-class operations team out of Sri Lanka. In addition to managing the Sri Lanka team, he will also be responsible for many key operational functions across the company,” Mr. Perera added.
The Different Colombo office was only announced a few months ago and the team is now already 14 people and the company is currently hiring.
“Different is also looking to hire a world-class engineering manager to lead the team locally and be the product lead on the ground here,” Mr. Rukmankan said adding that the team will continue to grow at this pace to keep up with business growth in Australia, with Queensland launching in September and growth exploding in NSW and Victoria.