Interviewed By Sumaiya Siddique, MBR Team

MBR: Greeho.com is one of Bangladesh’s newest property and facility management portals. Please tell us how you came up with the idea for Greeho and what was the motivation behind it.

 Shifatur Rahman: I will only be glad to. Just like anyone else, I was stuck at home during the lockdown last year and stared to catch up with friends over digital media a bit more than usual due to the sheer time that we all had in our hand. One such friend was Samad, who is now the Chairman of GREEHO.com. Samad has always been interested to pursue real estate projects and he has sharp business acumen and this has been an area which he personally wanted to tap into. I, on the other hand, have been fortunate to lead one of Bangladesh’s largest attempt to organize real estate data and transactions through a project that I launched by the name of bproperty.com. Therefore, I came with the property technology, also known as, #proptech knowledge. We both knew that the problems in the real estate market in Bangladesh are challenging but we could perhaps do a few more things about these challenges as we have led similar projects before.

We also decided to address the issue of growing friction between landlords and tenants. If you remember, there was commotion in a number of cases where rental failures were not mitigated amicably between the two parties. Both Samad and I knew that technology and data are the key to addressing some of the challenges in Bangladesh market and decided to go ahead and launch GREEHO.com.

 By June 2020, we moved into our first office with a team of 6 people. Today, we are a solid team of 37 team members who have done things together, faced challenges and were able to overcome some of them.

MBR: Greeho.com was launched in 2020, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Can you please tell us about some challenges faced by Greeho due to the pandemic and how were you able to overcome those challenges?

 Shifatur Rahman: Unlike some businesses that successfully rode the Covid wave and were able to sustain, GREEHO.com was born during Covid as you rightly said. Initial challenges were to train and align our pool of over 120 resources to be adhering to strict Covid hygiene standards. We saw that our users/customers were giving priority to basic hygiene such as hand wash/wearing of a mask so we quickly streamlined.

 Initially, we focused on pushing Household Services to try and understand the market and the users and their needs better. We did have issues finding quality and suitable resources at times since the pandemic has forced the emigration of so many people with essential skills out of Dhaka.

But at the same time, we were hoping and knew that things would be back to normal soon, so we focused heavily on training our Property Team who helps users with property transactions to clean up the back office. We utilized the time:

1. to find great properties for our clients
2. to improve upon our soft skills
3. to renegotiate better terms with developers, agents and sellers so that we could help our users with faster service and transactions While few things were challenging at times, we also knew that we need to push forward and use the time in order to gear up for the next phase.

MBR: Greeho is the youngest business to enter the Real Estate Industry of Bangladesh. Can you please tell us how you are adding value to your clients compared to your competitors and what sets Greeho aside from its competitors?

Shifatur Rahman: We are simply a tool that connects buyers with sellers, landlords with tenants. Yes, as an user, you can create a user profile and it will help you manage your household requirements too (For example: 3 monthly cleaning, shifting service, emergency plumbing). We work with other Agents, Brokers that are in the market who meet a certain criterion, the most important of them being transparent with decent service level.

Being a tech-enabled tool for the real estate industry, we complement most players who are in the market. As an example, if you are looking to buy a property, you will connect with sellers, developers, agencies and brokers through GREEHO.com. Essentially, we are a property marketplace and we want everyone to use us as a tool to transact easily.

 MBR: What is your plan for the future of Greeho? Where do you see Greeho in the next few years?

Shifatur Rahman: We started off with the intention to make property transaction easy through the usage of data, good content and then matching users to right properties using AI.

We also run a small agency model that helps us assist first time home buyers to find the perfect house within their budget. And also to recap, we push household services to enjoy a higher LTV (Life time value) with every user.

Having done all this, we are clear that the Bangladesh real estate market lacks an efficient marketplace. We also know that to make lives comfortable, we will need to service these properties with relevant requirements. GREEHO.com is on its way to becoming the marketplace that connects buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants, developers, agencies, brokers and banks by being the ultimate go-to portal.

 We also want to build a company that Bangladeshis can be proud of – we are going through an exciting period where we are building partnerships with mid to renowned developers, financial institutions such as IDLC that will offer a lot of value to GREEHO.com users in the future with preferential lending rates, access to a wider range of properties through lot more available source etc.

We are also in the process of securing our first external funding from local as well as foreign institutional investors who would bring in knowledge, capital and lots of energy to GREEHO.com.