HOUSING.

COM: MARKETING A SERVICE OFFERING

SERVICE MARKETING

SUBMITTED BY:
Amit Kumar
Asad Malik
Neha Nagar
Srikant Sharma

SUBMITTED TO: Dr. Kartik Dave

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, PUBLIC POLICY AND SOCIAL

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
AMBEDKAR UNIVERSITY DELHI

ASSIGNMENT-1
Question- 1. How the company Housing.com is creating value?
The Indian real estate industry started to boom because of the rise in business opportunities after
the liberalization of Indian economy in 1991. Though industry was highly fragmented and there
was a lack of transparency within it, even then there had been seen stupendous growth with the
main reasons being population growth, migration to urban areas, increase in incomes and job
opportunities and easy accessibility of financing. The real estate business in India remained an
unorganized sector as there was a lack of information and asymmetry with no credible data on
pricing, thus there was a very need for integrated technology based solutions. This gap had led to
the birth of online portal market in the early of 2005. The very first company came out in this
segment was 99acres.com in 2005, thenMagicbricks.com in 2006 and after that many other
players joined the competition.
One such company called Housing.com, was launched in 2012 by a group of 12 students of IIT
Bombay. Initially, the company operated on the same model like that of its competitors, but after
some time it started differentiating itself from its competitors with the aim of filling the existing
gap and most importantly to create value for its customers. The unique selling proposition of the
company was its map-based search. It wasnt just another portal which presented property
listings as classifieds but had taken a step ahead to pin the properties onto a virtual map that
allowed the user to locate them.
The company added a feature of online rental agreement and customized home loan facility that
helped to create a customized rent agreement and to finance the purchases of the users online
respectively. The unique feature of online rental agreement service was that the user was not
required to waste time buying a stamp for registration purposes as the stamp duty was paid by the
company itself. Thus, innovations in services that Housing.com provided based on consumer
insights, novel products, and three-dimensional view of every property listed made it a unique
and consumer oriented business and this how they were trying to create value by differentiating
themselves from others.

Question- 2. Which segment it should concentrate? How to deal with the conflicting
interests of buyers and sellers segment?
As per the business model of Housing.com, the sellers (who want to sell their properties or who
want to lend their properties on rent or on lease like brokers, builders, developers and
landowners) list their properties on the companys site to generate more leads by paying a
subscription fee, and the buyers (who are willing to purchase or who are willing to take the
premises on rent or lease) choose the best suitable option for him/her from the variety of
classified listings of the sellers on the website. Such type of business model is like a coin which
has two sides and each side has an equal probability to occur.

Thus, the business of

Housing.com is not dependent on just one segment of either sellers or buyers, but it is dependent
on both the segments equally. Either of the segment cannot act alone without the other segment
as both the segments are inter-dependent on each other because a seller cannot sell if there is no
buyer, similarly a buyer cannot buy if there is no seller. Therefore, Housing.com should
concentrate on both the segments and if it will fail in doing so, the business will be at risk and
will not survive for long.
Dealing with the conflicting interests of both the segments at the same point of time could be a
complex task. To make this process easier, Housing.com can make two divisions or departments
in the organisation (one for the sellers and another for the buyers), each of which will be
handling the issues associated with the particular segment. Each division must identify those
areas first where the company is lacking to meet the requirements of a particular segment and
then strategize its activities and steps as per the availability of information and resources to meet
those requirements.
Question- 3. What are the gaps in services to sellers segment? How to increase the listing
on the website?
Although, Housing.com was trying hard to differentiate its service offerings from those of its
competitors, but at some point, there were gaps lying in services to sellers segment due to
which. The problem the company was facing was that, initially due to the sales efficiency and
intelligence of the staff, the company was able to register more sellers on its website and hence
there were more subscription fees earned by the company. But in the subsequent years, the
brokers in many regions refused to renew them and complained that not enough customer
inquiries were generated from Housing.com. They also complained that the procedure of getting
3

their properties listed on their site was long and tedious, because even after the authentication of
the property by the companys local data collector, it would take another 24 hours to get the
property listed on their website. Also, many sellers were not happy about the photographs taken
of their properties and instead they preferred other portals like 99acres.com, Indiaproperty.com
whom they find very convenient to deal with.
Question- 4. What are the gaps in services to buyers segment? How to increase the traffic
on the website?

Question- 5. How the services provided by Housing.com are different from other online
services?
Housing.com was launched in 2012 by a group of 12 students of IIT Bombay. Initially, the
company operated on the same model like that of its competitors, but after some time it started
differentiating itself from its competitors with the aim of filling the existing gap and most
importantly to create value for its customers. The unique selling proposition of the company was
its map-based search.
The company added a feature of online rental agreement that helped to create a customized rent
agreement online. The users only had to provide inputs and they could also review clauses. The
unique feature of this service was that the user was not required to waste time buying a stamp for
registration purposes as the stamp duty was paid by the company itself. This gap was identified
and filled by Housing.com that enabled the people to do the things in least time as possible on
the online portals.
Earlier, before the existence of Housing.com, people were not aware of the schemes available in
the market and they had to visit multiple banks in order to compare schemes to find one that
suited their needs, and end up wasting time and money. This was another gap that was filled by
Housing.com when it launched its customized home loan facility that helped the users to finance
their purchases online. For this purpose, the company partnered with six of the top financial
institutions- Citibank, L&T Finance, Axis Bank, Dewan Housing Finance Limited, Punjab
National Bank Housing Finance and Bajaj Finserv.

There were other services like online booking for movers and packers and links with interior
decorators which were in the planning stage. The company was also trying to develop an
application for landlords that included steps and instructions on how to take photos of their
properties and wanted to arrange training sessions for the agents. Thus, innovations in services
that Housing.com provided based on consumer insights, novel products, and three-dimensional
view of every property listed made it a unique and consumer oriented business that differentiated
them from the other competitors.