This article is part of a series looking at all the competitors of UT Dallas’ 2020 Big Idea Pitch Competition.
Look up to shake up the family businesses in real estate with some new technology, computer science undergrad Akshat Sharma and recent grad Mario Flores launched Reallos in February.
“We want to change the way agents spend their time,” Sharma told NTX Inno via email. “By empowering the agents, we can ensure that every consumer has a great experience while buying and selling real estate. We truly want to make real estate real easy for everyone.”
Using what they call the robotic process automation tool, Reallos’ proprietary bots take over the administrative tasks of real estate agents, like paper work and data entry. The pair started the company after seeing the inefficiencies their parents -both real estate professionals – in the transaction process. Designed to mimic human interaction, Reallos’ bots free up agents time and help prevent data input errors.
Still in its early phases, Reallos is currently beta testing its technology with real estate agents in the DFW area. The company is hoping to be enterprise ready within about a year, before it plans to expand its services across Texas and other states.
What inspired you to start your business?
Sharma: Both of our families built their future in Real Estate. We grew up watching our parents struggle and put their sweat and tears into the business. While working for them, we saw how inefficient and error-prone these Real Estate Transactions were. We really wanted to help our families run their businesses efficiently, and that is why Reallos was born.
What is one of the biggest challenges you have faced so far? How did you overcome it?
One of the biggest challenges we faced was to get real estate professionals to give us an opportunity to demonstrate our product. Being college students, it is hard to be taken seriously by these professionals. We overcame this by conquering our fear of rejections and by learning to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. By cold calling dozens of real estate professionals daily, we were able to secure our first meeting which paved the way for many more.
How has COVID-19 affected your business and industry?
COVID has pushed industry professionals to look at new technologies to become more efficient, and we have seen more acceptance and interest in our product. With lending rates at an all-time low, real estate purchases have not slowed down and as more agents are forced to work from home, administration work continues to pile up. This has helped real estate companies understand the importance of back-office process automation, and this has been very helpful for Reallos. As far as our internal development goes, we have successfully leveraged video conferencing tools to keep us on track. With our development team currently situated in India, we had to adapt to the time difference and work our way around it.
This interview has been edited for clarity and grammar.
