Saahil Mohan, Founder and CEO of Bricks and Pixels Pvt Ltd
In an interaction with CIOTechOutlook, Saahil Mohan, Founder and CEO of Bricks and Pixels Pvt Ltd., emphasized the significant impact of AR/VR in enhancing customer experience, increasing transparency, and driving smarter decision-making for both buyers and developers in the Indian real estate market. Saahil also addressed how AR/VR technologies can reduce the sales cycle while improving the quality of leads, and enhancing the brand positioning with engaging, immersive, emotional, and property-synthesizing experiences.
With over a decade of experience, Saahil Mohan has been at the forefront of leveraging AR and VR technologies across diverse sectors, including gaming, medical, and real estate. His expertise lies in crafting immersive stories and developing impactful solutions to address real-world challenges, positioning Bricks and Pixels as a pioneering force in the real estate tech landscape.
The strategic value of AR/VR in real estate lies in its ability to facilitate remote property viewing and reduce physical site visits; what financial and operational metrics are used to evaluate these benefits against implementation costs?
The significant advantage of utilizing AR and VR technology in real estate is remote property viewings. AR and VR are effective tools to allow potential buyers or renters to explore properties interactively, even the ones that are still being built. Customers can virtually view and examine properties before going to the site. This enables them to have a greater context of the size, amenities, and layout of the property. AR/VR applications assist in saving time, hence buyers can select from a wider range of alternatives. It accelerates their decision-making and provides the ability to see, feel, and explore location alternatives that meet their preferences and requirements.
From a financial perspective, AR and VR platforms offer valuable benefits to builders and developers. AR/VR acts as a powerful decision-making gateway, helping potential buyers narrow down their choices without visiting the physical site and without professional intermediaries such as brokers. Users engage with the property for roughly 30 minutes in AR/VR, which enhances the chances of the property being perceived as more valuable by giving a premium feel. It also helps speed up the closing process and increases brand awareness - even if they don’t purchase, they remember the brand. This represents a migration from traditional push-based sales to pull-based discovery, with people preferring to seek out a space for themselves before making a purchase decision.
How does AR/VR adoption align with the evolving expectations of tech-savvy homebuyers or investors?
The number of tech-savvy buyers is continuing to grow. Due to shorter attention spans, people these days prefer not to spend an hour with a sales representative to understand property details. Instead, they like to have solutions that allow them to investigate and assess property on their own. The generation is also getting comfy with AR/VR spaces as they are using spatial computing technology. However, many real estate professionals in India are still overlooking this emerging audience and their preferences.
Tech-savvy buyers also expect higher transparency. In traditional real estate, transparency of information is often limited - even brokers often cannot provide basic information such as the size of a room. Conversely, AR and VR solutions include built-in measurement tools and user interfaces that show the precise size of each room. Buyers can understand visually exactly how big the room is with this clear modality. This type of accessibility makes it quicker and easier to comprehensively form decisions.
AR/VR implementation requires significant upfront investment—what factors should real estate companies consider when budgeting for these technologies?
The cost of hardware is decreasing, and with the entry of numerous new companies into the market, prices are anticipated to decline further. VR headsets are not just for gaming anymore; they are being used for educational purposes too. Hence, more people will purchase them for their kids as well as for general household use. In comparison to the video walkthroughs and 3D renders currently being used in real estate, AR/VR solutions only cost about 20-25% more than those offerings, but offer much more value and more interactive and intuitive experiences than static images or videos. This is not merely a one-time application; rather, it represents the creation of a long-term asset, essentially a comprehensive digital gallery.
For instance, if a builder launches a VR app showcasing both past and upcoming projects, it becomes a comprehensive library that users can explore anytime, offering lasting value and continuous engagement. Buyers traditionally want to look back on a developer’s past built projects to assess what has been delivered before they make any decisions. However, once projects are sold, builders typically have no access to these previous properties, making it difficult to evaluate the builder’s track record.
With AR/VR, even sold properties remain accessible in a virtual environment. Prospective buyers can see completed projects and understand the quality of construction to compare with upcoming developments. It provides a clear picture of delivered projects and what can be expected in future projects. In this way, developers have built a digital library of their accomplishments. This long-term resource not only increases transparency but also adds value to brand credibility, making it a valuable investment for real estate companies.
With the increasing adoption of AR/VR tools for property visualization, what impact has been observed on sales cycles and overall return on investment in the real estate sector?
AR and VR have positively impacted user attention and brand recall by enhancing engagement through immersive experiences. People will remember the brand while having an immersive experience with the VR experience. Having a view of the property is challenging unless the potential buyer travels to the site in person. AR and VR can not only show the properties from the potential buyer’s location, but also display it from any location. With this advantage, NRI investors can purchase property in India without the need to travel from overseas.
Behavior analytics is another feature of VR that is extremely valuable and will practically reduce the sales cycle. When a buyer views a property in person, a representative leads the buyer through the property, but there is no way for the builder or developer to know what happened. Buyer feedback is hardly recorded, and information pertinent to the details about the buyer’s concerns or preferences simply gets lost in the process of showing a property. Most brokers do not document their interactions with clients.
In contrast, a VR experience includes built-in analytics that track the client’s journey such as which rooms they spent the most time in and other user behaviors. This information is ideal for a developer to assess which layouts or features resonate with potential buyers. This information can create better planning, reduce the sales cycle, and generate higher-quality leads.
Given the strategic value of immersive virtual tours, how do AR/VR solutions influence long-term brand positioning in the competitive real estate market?
AR/VR offers a distinct advantage in the market. For instance, if a developer sets up a kiosk at various exhibitor locations, shopping malls, or in other public venue spaces, with interactive touchscreens showing various floor plans and immersive walkthroughs via VR headset, then it becomes a much more engaging and modern experience. This gives a developer distinct advantages over another who still chooses to use traditional methods of simply distributing brochures and explaining the property one-on-one as a sales strategy.
AR/VR allows a multitude of people to explore projects at once, which increases the volume of potential customers that can be serviced simultaneously. AR/VR is not only available via headsets. VR environments can be repurposed and used to create walkthrough videos and high-quality images. VR experience in real estate enabled potential buyers to connect and experience a property as memorable experiences that would form emotional connections for better brand recall.
VR experiences have the unique nature of allowing users to review and explore spaces freely, without other users staying with them, allowing them to imagine themselves living in that space. Traditional site visits, especially with multiple people at a time, can make it difficult for buyers to see a home as their own when they are in a crowded home. Alternatively, when a family engages with a VR property in a private place in a focused way as a family, they begin to envision themselves there. This emotional attachment is much stronger; it significantly increases brand recall. These elements play a crucial role in shaping long-term brand positioning and providing a competitive advantage in the real estate sector.
