#119 - Mayank Mathur, CEO of Avasa.ai - On identifying underserved markets and creating a new category

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that is transforming the way we rent residential property by shifting the focus to the needs of the tenant, not the agent. My guest is Mayank Mathur, CEO of Avasa.ai

Mayank Mathur is a technology entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in the industry. He co-founded a capital markets technology startup in India, developing trading platforms and blockchain solutions for brokers, banks, exchanges, and other financial institutions based globally. Mayank is an ex-Technology banker, having spent about 9 years advising global technology companies on M&A, and equity / debt fund raising.

His current PropTech venture in London (UK) is focused on simplifying the home search experience for residential tenants. The way he’s doing this inspired me, hence I invited him to be a guest on my podcast: We explore how and why the process of renting real estate has effectively not changed in the last 100 years – and what enormous waste, stress and financial drain this leads to for everyone in the process – and even beyond. We discuss how Mayank is creating a new category and what his view on what it takes to become a remarkable software business.

Here are some of his quotes:

The big idea is that tenants, residential tenants today are wasting a lot of time and energy on home search.

We want to reduce that time to less than 10 hours, make sure that all of these tenants are super relaxed during that process after they are starting a new chapter in their life. It has to come in a very relaxed manner rather than them being hassled about it or them being totally stressed out about it.

Historically, there has been no player in the market that looks after the interests of the residential tenants

We choose a business model which is centered around: How do we ensure we earn some money working with the tenants, but we don't want to completely or at all displace the other side of the equation because there is an important role that estate agents play.

The estate agents actually absolutely love us. They basically like us because a we bring what's called in the industry as hot leads.

During this interview, you will learn four things:

1. How you can identify underserved markets and create a new category by analysing existing markets and approach the problem from the ‘other end’
2. How to stick to your guns and play the infinite game in the early stage of your business when short-term ‘low-hanging fruit’ type opportunities are luring.
3. How to create a well-functioning funnel by giving partners what you have in abundance – creating win-win situations.
4. That innovating the business model is probably even more important than innovating the product.