India is on a roadmap that forecasts development
Chetan Singh, Founder & CEO, ArchChat in conversation with Leandra Monteiro, explains the concept behind ArchChat and the way forward for the industry. Ideology behind the inception of ArchChat? India today, is on a roadmap that forecasts development in almost every sector and infrastructure forms the backbone to this vision. Considering infrastructure, architecture industry comes to the forefront as the real estate sector in India is expected to attain a market size of USD 1 trillion by 2030 from USD 120 billion in 2017 and may contribute 13 percent of the country’s GDP by 2025. But, unfortunately, the sector still faces the heat of extensive project delays due to unending reasons that include Poor Planning, Labour issues and most importantly, Poor Communication, a centrifugal factor wherein there is a visible gap in having a streamlined platform for demand-supply communication during the design phase, communication between and within single demand and supply side parties that in turn fails to bring everyone on the same page and hence, indecisive delays in project completion. This encouraged me to come up with the concept of ArchChat. What makes this platform stand apart? The first of its kind innovative communication platform for architecture, interior and construction projects has become an industry disruptor by cutting project timelines by at least 20%. The platform brings distinct project stakeholders such as project owners, architects, interior designers, various engineering consultants, contractors, and product sellers on a single platform to collaborate on live projects. All conversations on Archchat happen for specific projects created by Architects. Unlike other messaging platforms, the conversations on Archchat are 100% private amongst people who are communicating on any specific project. Being free to every user, only those people can join the conversations who are invited to communicate on a specific project. Secondly, the in-built Google Translation feature allows an internationally diverse community by letting collaborators chats in their own language while delivering them to another collaborator in their preferred language. Having the Google interface within the platform, any and every search for products and designs becomes a possibility with 360 degree communication solution for any specific projects. More than just a chat platform, ArchChat is a complete workspace, letting collaborators build personal design libraries from which any design can easily be shared. Challenges faced in setting up this platform? Me, being a principal designer, too, faced the obstacles while coordinating for my projects and bringing everyone on the same platform. Analysing this gap, I understood the need to streamline this process to fast track project timelines wherein every single stakeholder can discuss every single aspects related to a specific project and I finally transformed my vision into reality with Archchat in June, 2019. Any innovation needs thorough research and our’s being a global product, it needed a thorough market study on how the architectural industry in each of the markets work and are they ready to accept any such solution. The interesting part is, in the Western countries, the acceptance to any innovation which saves time is always three fold wherein in India, we had to also think from a money perspective, if the users are at all willing to pay for it. What do you aim to achieve in 2020? With already 9,500 users onboard since inception, I foresees to have 30,000 new users onboard by the end of 2020. Keeping the focus more on small and medium projects currently, in the long run, my objective is also to reach out to the larger Governmental projects in the near future keeping in line with the Smart Cities vision.
Tags : Interviews