Despite India’s real estate market being worth USD 1 trillion by 2030, according to a report in Moneycontrol, finding a modest home at a fair price remains a challenge. When Narayan Lal quit his job to start a real estate advisory firm in 2013, he found the sector fragmented; local brokers still controlled deals, and there was a lack of trust between clients and brokers.

“This led to the idea of launching a broker aggregator app, in which end users could review ratings of brokers before selecting one,” he says.

He founded Turnip Technologies Pvt Ltd in July 2017, and the Brongo app went live in February 2018. Today, Brongo, short for Brokers on the Go, is India’s first real estate broker aggregator app connecting property seekers in Bengaluru to local brokers who are screened and verified by the Brongo team.

The 12 member Brongo team uses the WhatsApp Business app to communicate with clients and brokers and for handling website enquiries.

"WhatsApp has a better delivery and response rate. Clients like to stick to known means of communication”

“When we started, we had 25 brokers, but today, we have over 400. After connecting with a broker on the Brongo app, our clients move to WhatsApp to carry on the conversation,” Narayan says. “We use the WhatsApp Business app to communicate regularly with all our brokers and ensure that they work on all leads we send them. We find that WhatsApp has a better delivery and response rate. Clients like to stick to known means of communication.”

This makes the WhatsApp Business app a popular choice when it comes to Brongo’s mission of taking the pain out of real estate.