Solving the Challenge of Market Outreach, Digitally: Amura

While real estate is said to be a vibrant sector in a country like India but, there is a lot of work needed in the direction of making the real estate buying more user friendly. This applies to many industry sectors where targeted marketing is needed. With such outlook, Amura Technologies was formed. Headquartered in Pune with offices across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, Amura was founded by a team of 5 College of Engineering graduates from Pune - Vikram Kotnis, Ketan Sabnis, Vinayak Katkar, Pratik Rokade and Kiran Narasareddy. The founders were earlier working for Fortune 500 companies like Sun Microsystems, Deloitte, Amazon and IBM.

In an exclusive interaction with SMEStreet, Vikram Kotnis founder of Amura technologies explained about Amura and highlighted his roadmap for the future. “We have been successful in creating disruptive technology solutions which enable companies to manage all their digital assets, empower them to execute programmatic buying of their digital media, optimizing and analyzing campaigns in real time. Amura has pioneered the ushering in an era of engineered marketing approach – from intuition to data driven.” Vikram said.

What are the key focus areas that you are working on?

Today, Amura is working with over 70 real estate developers in India and has helped sell over One Billion USD  worth inventory for the calendar year 2014. They have successfully delivered marketing campaigns for reputed developers like Sobha Developers, Oberoi Realty, Shapoorji Pallonji Real Estate, Lodha Group, India Bulls Real Estate, Piramal Realty, Coldwell Banker India, XRBIA Developers, K Raheja Corp, Kolte-Patil Developers Ltd., Ahuja Constructions, Amanora Park Town, Ansal Housing, Gera Developments, Wave Group, DSK Developers among many others. Amura The firm has launched India's first real estate Sales and Marketing Automation Platform -Sell.Do in March 2014. They currently service well-known real estate players like Sobha Developers, Oberoi Realty, Shapoorji Pallonji Real Estate, Lodha Group, India Bulls Real Estate, Piramal Realty, Coldwell Banker India, XRBIA Developers, K Raheja Corp, Kolte-Patil Developers Ltd., Ahuja Constructions, Amanora Park Town, Ansal Housing, Gera Developments, Wave Group, DSK Developers to name a few.

Currently, Amura offers its clients, services ranging from online advertising, go-to market strategies and sales consulting to social media marketing, Big-data analytics, Mobile marketing, Web and mobile-app development to name a few. Real estate companies look at Amura as a strategic marketing and sales consultant helping them plan and execute their digital strategy, transform the quality of their engagement with today’s consumers, create elegant user experiences online and leverage big data analytics to improve their bottom lines. Amura's unique fusion of business strategy, data analytics and process automation enables its customers to manage business competently.

What are the evolving trends in online real estate marketing segment?

The real estate buying model has switched today. Previously, buyers would research offline and buy offline. This model was highly time consuming, and buyers would miss out on properties that were actually suited to them. Today, buyers research online and buy the product offline. As per a study by EY in 2013, 1 in 4 people consider Internet the preferred medium for real estate research. Buyers do not want to visit properties they are not interested in. They select only a few properties and visit them during their free time. With virtual tours, 3D renderings, 360 degree drone videos and virtual reality; the buyers have begun to get a virtual experience of property sites from the comfort of their homes. Being a global medium, and with extremely precise targeting capabilities; brands can today reach their target audience at a much cheaper cost than traditional medium. Also, being a very interactive medium means engaging with your buyers via social channels, email nurturing has become a lot easier.

As Internet is largely becoming a trusted medium for most of the required information, need for digital marketing for real estate projects assumes even greater significance to have an advantage over the competition as well as to be in direct touch with potential buyers. The companies that do not have an online presence or are not active digitally promoting their projects and engaging with prospective buyers are preparing to lose out in the battle of real estate supremacy.

How the role of digital marketing is evolving in this space?

Due to its extended reach, digital marketing for real estate is known to have shown a phenomenal increase in the number of leads almost by 300%, and property sellers now have opportunities to convert them as current buyers or as potential buyers for future projects. Since, buyers want a more personal buying experience on high monetary value purchases, they are increasingly getting inclined towards digital adverts online. B2B businesses or even real estate businesses selling higher value products achieve greater impact on branding and lead generation from digital marketing. This works good with real estate selling, where all the marketing is essentially directed towards generating leads, than on direct conversions. A research also states that the internet is influencing real estate purchases worth approximately $43 billion.

With developers uploading all relevant project-related information and site pictures to their websites, customers can have a complete digital sales experience. Consumers also get to see the project rendering on the website. At, Amura Marketing we have sold a total inventory of 4000 crores in India in the calendar year of 2014. 450 crores of property sale happened through online payment by potential buyers itself. With XRBIA, through GOSF we sold an inventory for the projects in Karjat and Panvel, of around 50 crores. For, Darode-Jog Properties we managed to get 125 online bookings which are roughly valued at 80 crores. We are just getting started with similar high impact campaigns with Provident Housing and are sure to have a record breaking sale. With trusted and well known brands it's easier for customers to make the decision of buying homes online which is why we are steadily achieving online sales for developers. Choosing inventory has become a much more transparent process. Investors, NRIs and people wanting to buy real estate in a different city prefer going online to book the apartment of their choice.

What are the key expansion plans of your company?

The company has been witnessing robust growth since inception and has been registering a 200% growth since last two fiscals. The company is working with over 70 real estate developers in India and has helped sell over One Billion USD worth inventory for the calendar year 2014.The company has been heavily investing  into R & D, product innovation and follows a philosophy of thinking "new age".Amura's research team is already collaborating with a few real estate companies from the US, mapping their requirements and preparing Amura to go global.

Amura has forward looking plans to launch World’s first Real Estate DMP – Data management platform along with other new products in the year FY 2015-16. The company also aspires to cater to Tier II cities where the demand for digital marketing is growing visibly. While strategy to tap the real estate companies in the SME segment is also on the anvil thereby enabling them to build better brands and sell competitively. Amura is also looking at an entry into the US markets with the flagship product Sell.Do towards the end of this financial year.

Moving from marketing to an advertising technology is a key area of research and technology development that the team at Amura is currently working on. With a over 47 Billion USD real estate advertising market (supposed to double by 2017); Amura aspires to be the market leader in real estate advertising sector.