Twenty-six-year-old Rahul Yadav, co-founder and CEO of property listings startup Housing.com, has recently made both good and bad news with remarkable regularity.

While initially, it was about raving reviews for his startup that has steadily competed with rivals several years old, later the outspoken Yadav ran into a spat with Sequoia India chief over poaching allegations, the Times group which runs rival Magicbricks.com, and later with his own company’s board.

Yadav then offered, and later withdrew, his resignation, after which he announced he would gift his entire stake worth about Rs 200 crore to his employees.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18’s Shruti Mishra, the young CEO sat down for an interaction.

Excerpts from the conversation.

Q: In April you resigned and then days later you apologized and withdrew your resignation, what was the reason behind this?

A: These are all our internal discussion that went out. I never gave it so much thought or weightage.

Q: Are you too sure of yourself, are you too sure of what you are doing or was this just a brash decision?

A: It was a very well calculated decision.

Q: If you are not again given something like that, would you again do it?

A: Yes, why not. I will calculate.

Q: What was your calculation, what did you calculate when you were resigning, what was the calculation that you did?

A: There are two options, A or B. I think whether agree to Rahul or let him go, I am sure that they will agree. As long as I am sure, I can use it in future also but the moment I am not sure that this time they may not agree, I will not do it.

Q: You also accused Sequoia of unethical practices and set allegations against Times Group’s magicbricks.com, what was that all about?

A: We had interesting conversation with Sequoia long back - they are like cut-throat professionals. That is why I said that is why they are more successful.

Q: Reportedly SoftBank which is your biggest shareholder is now overseeing all major decisions at housing, how is that arrangement going so far?

A: This is the first time I am running a company and I have no idea how to take board meetings and all those things. So they are teaching us a lot and I am learning and I am liking it.

Q: You tweeted saying, it is like going back to school again?

A: I used to love going to school. We had arrangement where if there is anything you are doing above USD 1 million, you should ping us. You don’t take everyday multimillion dollar decisions and whenever you take, you should take advise and this has been helpful.

Q: Are there more acquisitions in the pipeline that we will see?

A: You will see housing becoming a group of companies. We will have more than 10 companies, we have done few acquisitions, paper work is going on and you will hear news from us.

Q: What are the kind of spaces these companies are in?

A: Most of them around the real estate ecosystem, hardcore real estate -- not the ancillary services -- data analytics is one. Conversation and discussions is second. The diligence and the legal framework is third and then you will see the communication within the building and society software.

So entire ecosystem in some way we are building and there are a few initiatives that we are starting in-house, we are not acquiring.

Q: Search is your primary product and you have also started transacting online. What are the other innovations that you have done at Housing in the last one year?



A: Most of the real estate sites globally start with search box. Currently, Housing also has a search box. In Mumbai, there is high migration; people come from other cities and have no idea where to look for an apartment. They have no idea about the locality. Firstly, you should allow them to discover the locality. So, we are building that feature and soon we will be live. You will be able to pin point your locality.



In buying, people are okay in investing in Mumbai and Bangalore. There is no website where you can go and actually pick inventory of both the cities together. They will again ask to enter the locality in the search box. People don’t want to invest in a particular locality instead they want to invest in entire Mumbai.

Geo location mapping was not there because data was not there. We are the only company that has live geo map data of each and every apartment. We can actually show the location of the apartment and whether it actually falls in a particular locality or some other locality, whether it is near your office or not. We did the page initiation. You see some marks bigger, some marks smaller. There is a visibility index. So, let us say five people looked at one apartment and nobody contacted it means something is wrong with that apartment. We make it small in terms of visibility.



Q: Talking about innovations, can you take me through your slice view technology. What is that all about?



A: In India, most of the houses are sold even before they are constructed using virtual methods. We believe these houses can be sold online. You have to create an environment where people can just experience the project in 3D; they can pick up and see block 1, block 2, which floor, the entire visualisation of the project in 3D. So, you can cut the slice floor-wise.

Q: CommonFloor also has its live-in tour? How is your technology different from theirs?



A: Industries like using this now. We start with the data collection of verified photographs that are stored of each and every house. The industry is doing this with very poor quality. People have started doing it, but with poor quality.



Q: Take me through some of your revenue models. How are you generating profits for housing?



A: There are three types of businesses I see on internet. First one is the information classified and ad business. The second one is transaction and the third one is product or you can say Google, Amazon and Apple.

Google is like this information engine where you sell the ad products. Amazon is where you cut the transaction and Apple means you create your own product and where you decide the pricing. You can put all the businesses in these three categories.

Housing, till date, has been an information platform and now, we are entering into transactions. With this slice of technology you can actually transact online. The company is not at all focussed on revenue right now, but these are the channels I am saying. We are creating an eco system, which are like infinite opportunities to make money. The company is not focussed on making money right now.



Q: You are also getting in other modes of revenue generation models like online rental agreements, home loan etc. Can you throw some light on that?



A: We are getting large number of landlords. They are listing properties with us and when the tenant and the landlord do transaction, they need some help on the agreement side. In India, the agents who use old agreements and edit in it can sometimes make mistakes. We have created online rental agreements, which is good for the industry. We have launched it in Bangalore and are going to launch it in all the cities soon.