ANACITY expands its global presence with unique offerings for community management

Aayush Puri – Founder ANACITY

1. How did the idea for Anacity come about, and when did it start operations?

Aayush Puri - Founder ANACITY, having completed his education in the United States of America, Puri moved to a gated community in London, post which moved back to New York, USA. Through this journey of travel and settlement, there were glaring challenges during his housing - no communication platform among residents and management of gated communities, and heavy manual dependence on the financial management, not to mention security concerns. Faced with these challenges, Aayush soon came up with a society management solution - thus was born ANACITY, his start-up, in the year 2021.

2. What is your current customer base, and how are you strategizing on increasing it?

Our current customer base is twenty-four thousand users.

We keep innovating our features to make residents, building community managers, as well as security personnel's life easier. For example, we recently introduced a vaccination tracker, as well as an Omicron tracker. Additional COVID safety features on the ANACITY app include temperature and mask checks, quarantine units, contactless delivery, booking of common area facilities such as gyms, pools, etc. to avoid overcrowding, SpO2 Readings, among others.

In 2021, ANACITY expanded into GCC to cater to the requirements of this region for managing high-end communities using technology. The company even became a part of the Smart Dubai Initiative to integrate with Mollak - Dubai Land Departments/RERA's visionary initiative and platform for maintenance charge payments.

3. How do you see the market has grown for your offerings? Where do you feel there is scope for improvement?

People have started to understand the need for an apartment management software like ANACITY and how it increases the efficiency of management of communities.

In Dubai, the retirement residency visa, and golden visa for high net-worth individuals has increased the need of convenience and standard of living through technology.

COVID-19 outbreak has led to the largest and fastest shift in human behavior and need for our software.

Govts are pushing digitization.

1. The actualization of Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan lays out a plan for sustainable development in the city to promote quality of life and happiness.
2. In January 2019, UAE government had revealed a national community design policy for building happier communities through smart systems. So essentially, governments are pushing buildings to have smart systems, opening up opportunities for us as solution providers.

Lastly, Customers

1. Today, customers across the value chain are more inclined to go digital.
2. They are now more digitally aware and connected.

Factors like COVID-19, Govt's push, and customer awareness have all accelerated the pace of digitization for ANACITY

Scope of improvement:

-Continue to improve in updating core offerings and adaptation to constant market changes.

4. What are the core offerings by the enterprise and new offerings in the pipeline?

• Has a full-fledged ERP and security solution tailor-made for all types of communities,
• Major modules of Accounting & Maintenance, Fee Collections, Security Management, Communications, Community Engagement, Complaint Handling, as well as Facility Reservations etc.
• We are looking to invest in a Computer-Aided Facilities Managementsolution/Property management solution.

5. What are your plans for expansion globally and where do you see your company 5 years from now?

-With our dynamic tech stack we can deploy in any new MENA country within 15 days.

-We are looking to continue partnering with different government entities to bring in this technology and make living in an apartment/ gated community hassle free

We have expanded into different geographies namely, Qatar and Oman within GCC and Kenya, Nairobi, Rwanda in the Africa regions, and become the preferred technology partners for companies managing gated communities. Our focus is to grow exponentially globally and harness technology to make community management and living a pleasant and convenient experience

Just like FinTech grew out of the 2007 financial crisis, COVID 19 gave PropTech an opportunity as a powerful tool to overcome the crisis. We as ANACITY aim to create one of the fastest growing trends - Community Management Technology #CommTech.

Which will hopefully soon be synonymous with smart living where you can raise complaints, pay rents, manage leases, approve visitors, action landlord banking to multifamily payments and more, all through an app