AtOnePlace : Real Estate made easy or difficult ?

The third startup which I decided to cover from Proto.in 2008 is AtonePlace, a real estate service primarily targeted at NRIs (non-resident Indians).

AtOnePlace’s business model impressed me because what they are doing is not done by other real estate portals. They are providing the details of the various properties in India and all the details can be accessed by anyone at anytime for free, but the interesting question comes that how are they making money ?

Well, they act as a broker (like normal real estate broker) and take care of all the paper work, running around and provide personalized services to the clients who are sitting far away from the country.

The idea struck Gunjan Garg’s (founder of atoneplace) mind when he decided that he’ll invest in the property in the booming real estate market. However, couldn’t decide properly because in limited leaves, he couldn’t find the right property to invest in. Gunjan says “atoneplace is all about providing information about property & service to the client till their satisfaction“.

The idea is already working and they are already in profits as disclosed by Gunjan and were even approached by a (undisclosed) company for the acquisition, which was of course declined.

However, what definitely didn’t impress me was their website. Not only the website needs lot of work in terms of design but there were lot of problems in accessing and viewing the information about various listed properties.

What definitely needs to be done by AtOnePlace is that they should work on the interface because until and unless a customer can have a better experience with the website, it will be difficult for them to digest that the offline services are equally good.

Here’s the presentation provided by Gunjan in front of the VCs and entrepreneur’s at Proto.in 2008 :