Houzen has raised $1.5M in total. We talk with Saurabh Saxena, its CEO.
PetaCrunch: How would you describe Houzen in a single tweet?
Saurabh Saxena: The global real estate exchange.
PC: How did it all start and why?
SS: After business school, I moved into the M&A/private equity space where I worked on a number of deals with size ranging from $100m – $4.6b. One such deal I worked on back in 2016 was to advise a large global PE fund whether they should buy a large Western European brokerage house. A few leading brokerage businesses such as Cushman&Wakefield are owned by PE and due to their cash generative model are attractive to other large investors. What I however learnt after a thorough due diligence was that the brokerage model globally will undergo a systemic change and hence was not a very attractive purchase over a long term. Interestingly, I also reached out to some CXO level executives at a top brokerage house and they said “We are OK. We’ve been here for decades and we know what we are doing”. Today that brokerage and their counterparts have lost 30-80% of shareholder value and many top industry executives having to leave. Essentially, that was the time I spotted a very early opportunity in property and jumped on!
I have personally worked in 20+ industries and travel/airlines was one of the first industries I ever worked in. Later in life, I also spent time in investment banking looking at the trading front, middle and back office functions. The idea came from those experiences. A global real exchange – which does not exist today – could potentially bring down the lengthy transaction time (in real estate) of weeks and months down to 24 hours. Our only metric became speed of transaction and we set out to create the first B2B residential exchange. The loss from vacancies globally is of the order of $100b+ and the brokerage business globally generates $500b+ in revenue. It is a pretty big opportunity we are working towards, however it is – as in most businesses – all about execution.
PC: What have you achieved so far?
SS: We are now 15 full time people and a mix of 5-10 interns and contractors/agencies at any given point of time.
PC: How will you use your recent funding round?
SS: Expand demand channels (60%), expand supply (20%), G&A, PR, marketing (20%).
PC: What do you plan to achieve in the next 2-3 years?
SS: Expand supply across Western Europe i.e. Germany, France, Spain, UK and expand demand across Western Europe, East Asia, India, Middle East, and East Coast US.
