Identifying a gap in the need for home buyers to ensure the quality of a house, former Google real estate and workplace services director BR Nagaraj has teamed up with former SAP senior vice-president Ramakrishna Yarlapati to start home inspection services in India.
Launched in Bengaluru, under the bootstrapped company Phi Property Management Services three months ago, HomeInspeKtor has already completed 45 inspections in the city and a few others in Chennai and Gurgaon.
“There is no such service currently in the country, which offers technology-based inspection services for pre-delivery checks of houses,” said BR Nagaraj, adding that the company uses equipment such as clamp meters, moisture meters, fault detectors, infrared detectors, thermal cameras among others for inspection.
He said the company plans to expand from the current B2C to a B2B model as well. “We carry out checks from a user perspective.
The company does not get to the due diligence of the revenue documents for a building. While we are currently working on residential properties, we want to expand into office inspections and enter the hospitality sector The startup has a team of six people on the operations front apart from a core team.
It counts former diplomat and author N Parthasarathi, former board member at Infosys Srinath Batni and principal trustee of RV group of educational institutions and managing director of Advaith Group of companies MP Shyam as its advisors.
Nagaraj said the company is looking to enter the US markets in the next two to three months in the form of a marketplace and claims to have roped in big services for its platform. The company has partnered with the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors and says it is setting up the India Chapter for the body, which will provide local home inspectors access to InterNACHI’s offerings.