Society Management apps: an evolution in proptech

07th July 2020
Society Management apps: an evolution in proptech

App-based gated property management is an idea whose time has come.
By San Banerjee, Co-founder and CEO of ADDA
July 7 2020: The real estate industry has very recently made its entry into the field of technology. The traditional image of real estate was all about buying, selling or renting. To bridge this basic gap between buyer and seller or owner and tenant, we saw the advent of portals like 99acres.com, housing.com. However, as lifestyle gets more digital oriented, there has been a rising steady demand for tech in the niche of real estate. An aspect of real estate is society management.
Traditionally, society management was an entirely manual procedure. It involves a lot of logistics - billing and maintenance collection, society accounting, creating a workflow for repairs and maintenance in the community, keeping in touch with residents to list a few. The Management Committee/Association/RWA is a voluntary body with individuals who are working for the benefit of their communities beyond their usual jobs. Automating society management was a necessity. The society management apps were no longer a luxury in India, it was a need. This was the scenario in early 2009. Association offices ran on Excel, Tally, Google and Yahoo Groups.
The first phase of society management apps concentrated on the two major needs of any Association - billing and collection and Communication. Automated billing, keeping in mind tax structures, immediate receipts, striking group conversations with neighbours were some of the high points back in the day. From there, society management apps have come a long way to become the digital backbone of community automation. Maintenance payment, defaulter reduction, automating repair and maintenance workflow, emergency management, visitor management, parcel management, domestic staff management, facility management are all taken care of by society management apps now. 11 years and such a sea change.
Society management apps make life easy
The level of our hustling and the responsibilities we have towards our home is not decreasing anytime soon. Automation helps to take a lot of burden off residents living in apartment communities, housing societies or gated communities. A research by ADDA found 64% defaulters were unintentional defaulters. So a simple reminder helps. It also saves residents quite a bulk of money that could have been accrued as late payment penalty fees. With the advent of Payment Gateway and easy integration of such with softwares, payment of maintenance is easy peasy. This helps non resident owners also to clear their dues on time from anywhere in the world.
Any repair or maintenance issue can be attended on the go. Get complete all round security with approved visitor entries only. Always have access to emergency contacts and even an emergency alert system that sends SOS messages to your personal emergency contacts. Society management apps also give you access to a local online marketplace for essentials and non essentials. Management Committees get the advantage of auditor approved accounting setup, live reports on expense and savings.
Society management apps are known to record over 2X Return on Investment(ROI). They have helped communities to become cash rich and financially sustainable units.
Tech Industry In a post-Covid world
If anything this pandemic has taught us, then that is the importance of digitisation and technology. COVID has brought in more scope of innovation in this field and in the coming few months, the industry will be bringing in more and more innovations to assist in social distancing, adapting to the New Normal while keeping each one of us connected.

Sangeeta (San) Banerjee is the Co-Founder & CEO of ADDA,  a superApp for complete management of apartment complexes. She is responsible for managing the overall strategy, product positioning, customer outreach, and business expansion of the company.  An MBA degree in Finance & Decision Sciences from Louisiana State University, USA, and a BE in Electrical & Electronics from College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai, San incepted ADDA in 2009 along with her spouse Venkat Kandaswamy. The product  is used by over 2000 gated communities and 1.3 million users in 80 cities.