Each year, several young companies pitch themselves in front of a panel of 300 industry professionals and judges at the Proptech and Portal Watch conference. With only six minutes to present and an additional four minutes to answer questions from the panel, the stakes are high and there’s no time to waste.
This year, Egypt-based early-stage real estate portal Property Sorted beat out six other startups to win the title of Pitch Club winner at Online Marketplaces’ fall conference in Barcelona .
We caught up with winner CEO Abdelrahman Zohaily after the conference to discuss his business, emerging markets, business model, the size of the prize in MENA, and what it takes to win by default. We listened in-depth to find out if it was necessary. There is one unicorn, but there are two…
What does property sorting do?
We are building a reliable real estate market in the MENA region, starting with Egypt.
MENA has major problems with its basic search experience, including fake listings and phone spam. These problems have been going on for decades, ever since the portal was launched at the beginning of the Internet era. We leverage technology and AI to reduce costs and deliver a 10x better user experience based on these technologies.
Where did the business idea come from?
The idea arose from two aspects of transactions in different parts of the world: the sale of a property in Egypt and the purchase of a property in London.
When I saw the difference in information availability, portals, and transparency, I knew there was something there and I needed to pursue it as a business.
Can you build some context on the MENA region?
In the MENA region, there are approximately 1 billion people on the demand side. It’s huge. Regarding the number of houses, for example, Egypt has a population of 106 million people. The number of housing units is approximately 24 million.
And with 200,000 to 300,000 homes available online at any given time, most processes are still offline.
The demand for online home buying is very high and growing.
Another very important thing about this region is that the past five years or so have seen multiple currency devaluations and volatile stock markets, which has affected confidence. Therefore, for most people, real estate is the number one asset to put money into to protect against inflation, save for the future, family, etc.
Compare this to the UK, where there is a lot of money in the stock market and other reliable asset classes. It is very important to remember that even though most people in the MENA and MENAP regions rely heavily on real estate as an investment asset, it is still very difficult for them.
Abdelrahman Zohairy on stage at the Proptech and Portal Watch conference in Barcelona
What is the nature of competition in this region?
We are competing against five large companies, two of which are unicorns (Dubizzle, PropertyFinder). We’re also competing against Facebook’s Marketplace division, although Facebook isn’t technically a portal. Although there are several other players, these three businesses are the core components of the competitive landscape.
What technology do you use and what are you currently working on?
One of the most important things we do is check the accuracy of our listings, including price, title, description, and features. We use a lot of data points and technology to make sure it all makes sense and no one can post anything fake.
We’re currently working on some really exciting things with SEO and AI-generated content. I’m creating a kind of endpoint in my backend that takes a lot of parameters. You can tell them that you want to create a blog. This is the user intent, this is the ISP, and this is the point of the user journey.
Then, use your LLM and your own data to create high-quality content. This is useful for serious programmatic SEO.
How do you make money?
We sell high quality leads to agents. Because we are a data-first company, we collect data points about what our customers do, where they come from, where they click, how long they spend on certain pages, and what searches they perform. I will.
This creates a profile and depending on that lead’s engagement, you can say this person is high intent, medium intent, or low intent.
Then, stratify your leads and price them according to their level of intent and where they’re searching.
In other words, you’ll make more money by selling high-intent leads searching in trending areas than by selling medium-intent leads in less popular areas.
Do I receive a portion of the commission?
No, it’s not. We do not take into account home prices and do not participate in trading or fee pools. We see ourselves as a technology company, and we see our agents as trusted advisors who close deals and deserve full commissions. This is considered more scalable.
How do we gather supplies? Do you approach agents directly or do you scrape them?
That’s a great question, but it’s actually both. We talk to the supply side and they provide us with data directly. We also crawl the web, collect every listing from every source, and try to aggregate it all on our platform.
We are also looking to attract FSBO supply and maximize our coverage in the future.
All of our traffic is organic and comes from online and offline conversations, from in-person conversations to Facebook, Reddit threads, and SEO.
What are the opportunities for investors in MENA?
Another great question. As I mentioned earlier, we are a large region with 1 billion people and already have two unicorns.
I believe there is room for another $1 billion unicorn in MENA, if not two. This is a very large market.
There’s another interesting point that most people don’t know about. It’s that most of these countries haven’t been built yet.
Most developed countries have already been built, but in Egypt we live on less than 10% of the country. Isn’t it the same for Saudi Arabia? It’s almost empty.
There is still much work to be done. Development potential, population growth – MENA is like a video game where you have free land to build on and watch your fledgling city grow into a thriving metropolis over time. Observe.
Add to this the fundamental questions about search, data, and transactions that are still unsolved. This is a big deal and there is a huge opportunity for great things to happen.
What is the biggest problem you want solved today?
As a founder, I have a lot of problems.
We are currently self-funded, but we want to grow faster and move forward. It is true that no amount of money can solve all problems, but it is good to have a certain amount of money.
We want to raise funding from angels who have a strategic, long-term vision for the industry. We want to team up with people who understand that we have a long-term plan, not a “3 year and quit” collaboration.
What will it take for Property Sorted to become MENA and MENAP’s next unicorn?
That’s a great question! The first is funding. To go up against unicorns like Dubizzle Group and Property Finder, you need money to beat them. Fundraising is important because these companies are ready to raise $50 million or $100 million.
Next is talent. Unicorn is based in the UAE and is able to attract top talent from Europe. We need a great team to compete against them.
Finally, you need to be smart about where you compete. We don’t want unicorns to fight strong wars in certain areas. You need to focus on areas that are not strategic priorities.
For us, the issue with fake listings in Egypt and more of a demand-side focus (unicorns are supply-side focused). We need to approach MENA differently.
Talk about AI.
I’m somewhere between technology and business. I did a lot of data science years ago, so I know some of the details.
I think AI is being thrown around a lot as a solution, but it’s more of an enabler to reduce costs and increase revenue.
But it’s really just a tool. And I think it’s important to always remember that at this point, AI is still a tool and not a replacement for humans. For example, you can’t use AI to replace a conference speaker. We need experienced people to voice all these insights and secret sauces and unleash their brain power.
AI can help us do better, but it’s not really a replacement. So I think that’s a really important thing to remember.
How do you feel about the industry as a whole after the PPW conference in Barcelona?
This industry operates in a very strong niche market. Real estate portals are an industry unto themselves and changing this industry is extremely difficult.
I think startups are trying to take over market leaders in the wrong way by building new portals. You need ChatGPT to compete with Google, and this also applies to new portal businesses. Changing the industry at this stage will require a paradigm shift.
Congratulations on winning the Pitch Club. How are you feeling?
wonderful! We learned a lot from what we saw and heard here and improved our pitch.
What does it take to make a great pitch?
Pitch is the measure between storytelling and data.
In the early stages of a young business when data is scarce, you need to focus on the storytelling aspect, contextualizing the problem and bringing emotion and a bigger vision to your pitch.
As we grow and access more data, we’ll be able to share more numbers-driven and business-focused themes.
The audience is also important. If they have advanced knowledge about the problem, you can focus on the solution. But if they don’t understand the problem, you should prioritize filling all those gaps first and spend less time solving it.
What is something the industry isn’t talking about that we should be spending more time talking about?
We talk about developing and emerging markets and we need to take a closer look. There are so many opportunities in the populous markets of the MENA and MENAP regions. We lack the basics that are taken for granted in mature markets such as the UK and Australia.
This is something investors and the industry as a whole should pay attention to.
And finally… What about Proptech and Portal Watch conference introductions?
It turned out that the hurdles for this conference were extremely high. I took notes for 90% of the talk! I learned so many things. We have great speakers, very experienced people.
This conference was very informative. I highly recommend this event to everyone.
Being here has given us incredible confidence in what we’re doing, so we hope to be back soon. We strongly believe that what we do is desperately needed, and we hear from our customers as well.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who worked hard to make this a valuable experience for the participants. I’ll be back next time.
