Vyoma Pandit & Arun Anand: On The Mission Of Bringing Cash Flow & Sales Circularity In Broken Real-Estate Value Chains
Arun Anand
Co-Founder
Rooted in Bangalore, they have realized the opportunity to mitigate the big supply-demand gap in the residential real estate market. To cement the same, Flow Realty came into ideation as India’s 1st B2B Real Estate as a Service Enterprise (REaaS), which offers superior knowledge-based services to all stakeholders on a feebased model. CEO Insights engages an exclusive conversation with the founders Arun & Vyoma, to deduce more about their journey and the company.
Enumerate details about youreducational and professional background before Flow.
Vyoma: Like millions in India, I’m an ‘accidental software engineer’ who after two years of coding, discovered her orientation for business & I went on to pursue my postgraduate in management from IIM-Bangalore. Amidst the global 2009 recession, I received a campus offer for a sales role in Lodha Group. Though entering into Real estate was an accident, I began to look at the opportunities and pioneered the concept of Sales Strategy in Lodha Group. Later, I moved to Bangalore and worked with Brigade Group for five years before joining Shriram Properties as CMO.
Arun: I completed engineering from NIT, Tiruchirappalli, and pursued MBA from SVKM's Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies. I always believed in acquiring new skills and had an opportunity to accumulate cross-functional and cross-industrial experience from BFSI to IT, Real Estate, and from Marketing to Finance and General Management while working with giants such as Lodha Group, Embassy Group, and Shriram Properties.
What prompted the establishment of Flow?
In 2012, when Shriram Properties was looking for extensive change management envisioning aggressive growth, we got an opportunity to join them. By way of innovative product strategies, aggressive go-to-market strategies, building a driven team, and use of technology to drive automation, we were able to drive the transformation exercise that helped the company expand its team across three cities in India, launch over a dozen new projects and triple its presales & collections volume in just three years.
This exercise seeded the thought of taking the sales-focused business transformation to a wider set of developers. The pandemic and resulting cashflow stress in the industry, made us see an opportunity to start our entrepreneurship journey and we conceptualized Flow Realty in October 2020.
What gap did you both observe to resolve through the company?
Real estate is a tricky industry in terms of the talent pool. It is mostly considered as an unprofessional, fragmented, and unorganized segment. However, in the last 10 years, it has started observing positive changes with several professional developers delving to innovate, automate, and explore alternative real-estate asset classes, but the best quality talent still chooses to pick sectors like e-Commerce, FMCG, automobiles over RE. This apart, the cashflow cycles & regulatory issues are tricky, which has resulted in several stalled projects across the country in the last five years.
With Flow, we are creating a high quality talent pool to help developers not worry about sales, collections, and cash flow cycles. We make them focus on their core competency and ensure that their product and brand are taken to the market in the right way.
Tell us about your roles and responsibilities at Flow.
Arun: At an early-stage company, it is important to keep your feet on the ground and be involved in all aspects of the business as much as possible. However, my core responsibility has been in ensuring sufficient cash flow, a good set of customers, people, and inventory.
In 2012, when Shriram Properties was looking for extensive change management envisioning aggressive growth, we got an opportunity to join them. By way of innovative product strategies, aggressive go-to-market strategies, building a driven team, and use of technology to drive automation, we were able to drive the transformation exercise that helped the company expand its team across three cities in India, launch over a dozen new projects and triple its presales & collections volume in just three years.
This exercise seeded the thought of taking the sales-focused business transformation to a wider set of developers. The pandemic and resulting cashflow stress in the industry, made us see an opportunity to start our entrepreneurship journey and we conceptualized Flow Realty in October 2020.
The young bootstrapped company has made a name for itself with a strong 30-member team who could even manoeuvre a lockdown and do over Rs. 50 crore of business with technology and distribution management
What gap did you both observe to resolve through the company?
Real estate is a tricky industry in terms of the talent pool. It is mostly considered as an unprofessional, fragmented, and unorganized segment. However, in the last 10 years, it has started observing positive changes with several professional developers delving to innovate, automate, and explore alternative real-estate asset classes, but the best quality talent still chooses to pick sectors like e-Commerce, FMCG, automobiles over RE. This apart, the cashflow cycles & regulatory issues are tricky, which has resulted in several stalled projects across the country in the last five years.
With Flow, we are creating a high quality talent pool to help developers not worry about sales, collections, and cash flow cycles. We make them focus on their core competency and ensure that their product and brand are taken to the market in the right way.
Tell us about your roles and responsibilities at Flow.
Arun: At an early-stage company, it is important to keep your feet on the ground and be involved in all aspects of the business as much as possible. However, my core responsibility has been in ensuring sufficient cash flow, a good set of customers, people, and inventory.
I’m the torchbearer to make sure that the revenue is always ahead of the cost with a comfortable margin.
Vyoma: Since we both have worked together and as the company is still young, we haven’t made strong compartments yet. But with my deep background in marketing and a strong focus on people & technology, I mostly take care of the internal operations such as people management, marketing strategy, funnel management & technology initiatives.
Vyoma Pandit, Co-Founder
Brief us on your brainchild. Highlight the team and services offered by the brand.
Flow Realty is not just a consulting firm, an agency, or a channel partner. We are a team that can cover the widest spectrum in real estate, with an understanding of everything from architecture to marketing to construction to cashflow management, which is why we chose to call it 'Real Estate as a Service (REaaS)'. Our vision is to build a high-quality talent pool that can help young developers build their brand and bring in a high-quality sales experience with predictable cashflows to make projects financially secure.
We are completely bootstrapped and turned into a well-respected brand within just 9 months of operations while being profitable & cash flow positive from the first quarter. With a talent pool of 30+ smart minds from top developers and institutions, we are taking up projects from mid-sized developers and have successfully created case studies in stressed-asset turn-around, new market entry, brand expansion, and more. One of our biggest strengths is our team & the way we train them hard to do pioneering work in the industry. With extensive 20-point filtering criteria on hiring, we push our team to live our motto of 'Passion. Perseverance. Collaboration'.
Arun Anand, Co-Founder, Flow Realty India
Arun’s perseverance to constantly enhance skills and accept challenging tasks has helped him start his own business and have a stronghold on the entire business operations.
Vyoma Pandit, Co-Founder, Flow Realty India
Vyoma’s ability to create a perfect balance between EQ & IQ and her capacity to formulate new sales strategies, marketing campaigns and people programs makes her a much-valued 'shared CMO' resource in the industry.
Vyoma: Since we both have worked together and as the company is still young, we haven’t made strong compartments yet. But with my deep background in marketing and a strong focus on people & technology, I mostly take care of the internal operations such as people management, marketing strategy, funnel management & technology initiatives.
Vyoma Pandit, Co-Founder
Brief us on your brainchild. Highlight the team and services offered by the brand.
Flow Realty is not just a consulting firm, an agency, or a channel partner. We are a team that can cover the widest spectrum in real estate, with an understanding of everything from architecture to marketing to construction to cashflow management, which is why we chose to call it 'Real Estate as a Service (REaaS)'. Our vision is to build a high-quality talent pool that can help young developers build their brand and bring in a high-quality sales experience with predictable cashflows to make projects financially secure.
We are completely bootstrapped and turned into a well-respected brand within just 9 months of operations while being profitable & cash flow positive from the first quarter. With a talent pool of 30+ smart minds from top developers and institutions, we are taking up projects from mid-sized developers and have successfully created case studies in stressed-asset turn-around, new market entry, brand expansion, and more. One of our biggest strengths is our team & the way we train them hard to do pioneering work in the industry. With extensive 20-point filtering criteria on hiring, we push our team to live our motto of 'Passion. Perseverance. Collaboration'.
Arun Anand, Co-Founder, Flow Realty India
Arun’s perseverance to constantly enhance skills and accept challenging tasks has helped him start his own business and have a stronghold on the entire business operations.
Vyoma Pandit, Co-Founder, Flow Realty India
Vyoma’s ability to create a perfect balance between EQ & IQ and her capacity to formulate new sales strategies, marketing campaigns and people programs makes her a much-valued 'shared CMO' resource in the industry.