Looking ahead: Lamudi chief says incubator model future of economy

With 247% increase in online real estate searches, Pakistan ideal for startups

LAHORE: Pakistan’s rapidly growing telecommunication industry, with a growing smartphone usage, is bound to catch attention of some of the more developed economies of the world.

For the German incubator Rocket Internet, Pakistan was the ideal economy to establish itself through a series of start-ups a couple of years ago.

Lamudi.com Global Co-founder and Managing Director Paul Philipp Hermann, whilst highlighting this point, said internet penetration in Pakistan has risen much faster in the last five years than Germany, which registered a digital boom in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“Currently, more and more people are opting for smartphone usage and this trend is a prelude for a bright future for us in Pakistan,” said Hermann in an interview with The Express Tribune.

Hermann was in the country to monitor the progress Lamudi Pakistan has made in the last two years. The portal, which is just a single venture of Rocket Internet, caters for online real estate market, and according to Hermann, it is doing quite well.

Trendsetter

Hermann believes that the model of incubators is the future of the whole economy. “In Germany, everything is available online; we decided to look for emerging markets with a growing need to adopt the next generation of services and where competition would be slim.”

He said Pakistan is part of several such investments in various countries, however, it is considered to be a first-tier country for the German investor.

“We want a company which builds a product through strong technological standards combined with advanced marketing strategies that make the product superior in terms of knowledge quotient.”

“Rocket Internet has all such expertise, plus we also know how to raise funds; however, to achieve this we need local knowledge to know the markets better and to combine the expertise for best results,” he added.

Despite high ambitions, the company has not been able to make profits after two years of operations and to change this around the company has to raise funds from its investors, according to Hermann.

Recently, the company raised fresh investments of €10 million to fund the Lamudi ventures in Asian markets.

Pakistan’s market

Talking about the real estate market, Hermann said the Pakistani real estate agents need education on how to properly utilise the online platform.

“German agents invest their time, they are more accurate in giving the descriptions of the property along with pictures, and in comparison Pakistani agents are not very well prepared,” he said.

Pakistan has observed a 247% increase in online real estate searches in the past one year. There are around 30 million internet users currently and after the introduction of third generation services, smart phone users have reached around 18 million, he said.

The real estate searches via smartphone have increased to 60% compared to 38% last year for their portal alone.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2015.

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