An over-enthusiastic colleague comes up to me and says, “Hey! Let’s make this a cool feature where a homebuyer can come and pay online to buy her dream home”.
What I want to say – “What does that even mean?”
What I say – “The average Indian consumer is yet to mature to the level where she can trust a user interface on her desktop enough to make such a high involvement purchase online. This is a behaviour changing product”.
The over-enthusiastic colleague is thinking to himself – “Was that a no or a yes?”
I’m Kartik Datwani, a product manager at RoofandFloor and the above is an example of what I go through every day. Almost all the employees at RoofandFloor get at least one product idea daily. Inevitably, these ideas are routed to me. I spent half of my work day saying “No”. The other half is spent thinking about how RoofandFloor can achieve its mission of helping homebuyers in India buy the home of their choice with the most relevant and accurate information.
I’m able to focus on the above problem because of the dynamic work environment that exists inside our office. Every person in the company is pursuing a yearly target broken down into monthly mini-targets. This keeps everyone charged up. RoofandFloor is a startup which is disrupting the Indian real estate industry – for disruption, sharp focus is required – for sharp focus, exemplary motivation is required. RoofandFloor as a company derives its motivation from its parent, the 139-year-old The Hindu Publication Group, which was founded to bring transparency of information to Indians under the British rule. More than a century later, RoofandFloor wants to achieve transparency in the opaque world of Indian real estate.
I joined RoofandFloor in December 2015 because I was inspired by this vision. To take my first step towards this vision, I built a new business line where expert advisors help a homebuyer search her dream home, assist in site visits, negotiation with builders and finally help in legally verifying the home that was bought. It was started as a one-person show in January 2016, but now there is a team of 10 people working day and night in this business line.
RoofandFloor intends to be one of the Top 3 players in the online real estate industry by 2020. It is certainly going to be a roller-coaster ride while we get there.
As for me, I look forward to the next product idea. As long as we are constantly challenging ourselves, I know that we are growing. It’s that growth that gives me satisfaction like no other.
very inspiring thoughts!