Start-up ‘Different’ looks to Sri Lanka for software engineers
Different, founded by former Product Global Head for Uber Mina Radhakrishnan and her Sri Lankan born husband Ruwin Perera, an Australian who was a Softbank Director and former Global Business Strategy Principal for Google, are the dynamic duo behind the app that’s revolutionising Australian property management and they will now be imparting their knowledge and expertise towards leading a new direction in the property management industry.
“Sri Lanka has a huge opportunity to harness the talent of our people and create a great technology export industry. There is unlimited global demand for Sri Lankan software engineers earning US$1,500 a month, living and working in Colombo. Different is living proof that Sri Lankan talent can compete with the rest of the world, and all we need to do is give our people these opportunities; and Different, as an Australian/sri Lankan company, is attempting to do just that,” said Different Co-founder Ruwin Perera, who was in Sri Lanka to finalise arrangements pertaining to hiring top notch Sri Lankan software engineers for his Sri Lankan operation.
“Different offers the entire gamut of property management services from listing, pricing/rent setting, viewing of properties, tenant selection, payments, landlord protection plans, maintenance, inspections, paying of rates and taxes, while your owner portal ensures that all your important documents are just one click away,” he added.
Different also provides clear, up-to-date monthly statements that you can access any time through your owner portal. Different is a full service property management agency with a monthly fixed management fee per property. It has built in apps which give tenants a way to easily lodge problems in the property that need to be fixed, as well as pay rent. According to Perera, step one is to rebuild the property management industry, but on the way to building a broader consumer business.
“We do not see ourselves as a real estate company that does technology. We are a technology company that does real estate. There is a core difference. We don’t believe that good service is about returning someone’s call faster. It is about eliminating the need to call someone at all. We manage many hundreds of homes, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property across Melbourne and Sydney and have raised several million dollars from leading venture capitals, such as Airtree as well as Foundation Capital.”
Different is making property managers more efficient and productive while delighting tenants, which is a genuinely groundbreaking feat in itself. The app, whose initial version was launched in 2017, automates the myriad details of rental ownership that may slip through the cracks, assisting tenants with maintenance requests and communication, and even guaranteeing on-time rent payment to property owners. The app lowers cost of ownership by reducing property management fees.
“Property management isn’t the most transparent industry, especially compared to consumer financial i n s t i t u t i o n s . Yo u m i g h t h a v e US$10,000 in your bank account or US$500 in your bank account, but you always know exactly what is happening with your bank account. You can go online and see your balance, every transaction, every fee,” Perera pointed out.
“As a property owner, you might have US$700,000 or US$1 million tied up in your property and you don’t have any transparency. We’re used to transparency in every other aspect of our financial lives. You bring that transparency and visibility to property management through a combination of linking technology and people. There’s a consumer need here, we are blending technology and people to help us solve it.”
“Different is looking at building a company and creating something that was really fundamentally about creating a joyful consumer experience for everyday people. It’s not about trying to create a luxury experience for the really affluent, it was just, ‘how can we build something that is used by ordinary people all the time?’ When you think of the things that we all do - family, love, home - home was the common theme and element.”
“Different will be investing heavily in Sri Lanka,” said Perera who was excited to be creating jobs for his fellow Sri Lankans. “Our plan is to create a great product company, and hire the very best engineers in this country and challenge them in ways that other companies are not able to do. What we are building is not easy. Our expectations are high, and the work is challenging. However the opportunities we can offer great people are global and of the highest level.”
Perera went on to say that Sri Lanka has 300,000 students sitting university exams every year and only 30,000 places.
“We have a huge untapped opportunity in our educated, striving, young people. If I can come here and create a bunch of jobs, there are 1,000 people like me who can create 10, 20, 50 roles, and that’s without foreigners, that’s just in the diaspora. That’s 10, 20 or 50,000 highly skilled, highly technical, well paying jobs. Let’s harness the ambitions of our young people and build a great technology industry here in Sri Lanka.”