PropertyGuru moving from search to match platform

In addition to search results, it will also offer insight and recommendation, personalised for individual users. 
Manav Kamboj, chief technology officer, said the company will soon announce plans to offer more value through innovation to its users in the Asean market, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and cybersecurity. 
“A large number of users, in various states of requiring a property, look for information on our website,” said Kamboj.
The company focuses on using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and advanced data analytics to increase its capability to offer recommendation to users and improve the quality of its listing.
“We strive to offer the most relevant result and latest information to users. As for our agents, we are focused on encouraging them to add more properties to the listings,” said Kamboj.
On the website. there are around 25 million property secrets that are translated into 100 million data points along with transaction data, listing data, and inquiry data. “We have a strong data science team and we are very keen on open sources as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning. We are strong on data capability in property tech,” said Kamboj.
PropertyGuru Group’s market, in terms of inquiry and released properties listed with the group, spans Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia with more than 700,000 listings. 
“Consumers can just come to the platform and key in their names. In terms of consumer market share, it is about the number of people visiting the website to look for property and the time they spend on it,” he said. DDproperty has about 50 per cent of market share in Thailand. 
Kamolpat Swaengkit, country manager for DDproperty, said that the company would leverage artificial intelligence to make every property search a highly personalised and intuitive experience. It is a part of PropertyGuru Group’s strategy in moving from a search platform to a match platform.
Underpinning this are machine learning algorithms, which have been trained to recognise behavioural cues to determine the kind of properties a user is looking for and the content they are likely to be interested in. 
“As DDproperty’s AI-powered recommendation engine learns more about each user’s unique needs and preferences, solutions will increasingly become tailored, smarter and more accurate,” said Kamolpat.
In Thailand, DDproperty sees an average of around 200,000 listings per month, while the PropertyGuru Group has around 2 million per month. 
“In Singapore and Malaysia, most of the listings come from agents. In Thailand, it is mix between agents and individual,” said Kamolpat.
DDproperty has around 3 million visits per month with around 1.4 million users in Thailand. It has close to 14 million page views and 52,000 inquiries per month. It has a market share of around 46 per cent and users spend an average of 4 minutes on the website, 
PropertyGuru Group recently secured 200 million Singapore dollars (US$145 million, Bt4.6 billion ) in a Series D round of funding by leading global investment firm KKR. It has also integrated Vietnam’s No 1 property portal Batdongsan.com.vn into the group, making PropertyGuru the leading property technology player across five markets in the region.