IT Voice – What inspired you to start ADDA.io, and how has the journey been so far?
San Banerjee – Living in apartment communities ever since I was 10, I have experienced the life across Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Madison, Chicago and Baton Rouge. The residents live like a close knit family, and together they can create immense impact on local businesses as well as governance. However, such residential communities, on many occasions, felt like disconnected islands with no technology to manage these communities effectively.
San Banerjee – I felt this is where I could really make a difference, and in 2009, I set out to change that with the help of technology. We started with ERP administration system and within a year we were spread across 20 cities in the country. A few years later, in 2013, keeping in tune with the changing times we launched ADDA mobile app and introduced home services marketplace ADDA Discover along with Gate software ADDA Gatekeeper. We also spread across Dubai and UAE, creating private and secure experiences for the residents. In this journey, my husband Venkat also joined as the Co-Founder and CTO of ADDA, his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Louisiana State University helping us. ADDA is currently profitable. We have 2.1 million users worldwide. Every quarter, ADDA raises about five lakh crores of invoices related to housing society dues. Maintenance payments totalling 500 crores are made each month through our app.
IT Voice – How does ADDA.io help Residential Associations manage their communities more efficiently?
San Banerjee – Today, ADDA is the only all-inclusive solution for any gated residential property, meeting all essential needs like enabling a private social network to facilitate communication between association members, owners, and tenants; facility management solutions; an AI-enabled community helpdesk; a dedicated billing and accounting solution to assist the management committee in collecting maintenance dues and sending bills; and other accounting modules to stay on top of housing society.
Using its specialised housing society accounting platform, ADDA Books, to streamline housing society finances is one of ADDA’s main priorities. More than 200 expert Housing Society Accounting Services Providers in India, who frequently collaborate exclusively with societies that use ADDA Books, find it to be the most favoured option for the majority of society treasurers. Additionally, we remain dedicated to our goal of using the app’s community-building features to empower happy communities worldwide. We can confidently state that ADDA is considerably superior to its rivals, such as Mygate and Nobrokerhood, because of our continuous innovation driven by our obsession to best solve our user’s problems.
IT Voice – What are the key challenges residential communities face today, and how does ADDA.io address them?
San Banerjee – From Communication, Visitor Management, Accounting, to Facility Management, ADDA has used technology to overcome many challenges that residential communities face. ADDA can be used by owners or tenants living in apartments for visitor approvals, raising service request, facility booking, community networking as well as maintenance fee payment that can be deducted automatically. ADDA also helps to find recommendations for helpers in the community, call maintenance team, create polls and also buy, sell and rent using ADDA Classifieds. Ensuring smooth communication amongst the various stakeholders and automation of processes has eased out multiple problems.
IT Voice -Can you share a success story of a community that transformed using ADDA.io?
San Banerjee – Prestige Shantiniketan, a vibrant community with 3,003 units, has undergone a remarkable transformation with ADDA, boosting efficiency and transparency.
They use ADDA as their official Communication channel. This makes sure that that all community updates and information reach all residents within 60 seconds on their app.
The AI-enabled Helpdesk module efficiently handles approximately 1,000+ service requests per month. ADDA’s accounting suite, ADDA Books, has automated invoicing and collection tracking, reducing defaulters and cutting non-essential and otherwise hidden community expenses.
Embassy Group manages most of their properties on ADDA’s white-labelled app to enhance operational efficiency and resident experience.
Through various integrations like Elevator integration, CRM integration, prepaid meter integration for electricity and gas – a rich living experience is enabled for residents.
Embassy Groups’s adoption of advanced purchase workflow modules has modernized operations. Automated payment reminders have reduced defaulters, while centralized income and expense tracking has improved budgeting.
The facility booking feature, widely used by the properties, has eliminated scheduling conflicts, reduced manual maintenance efforts, and enhanced resident satisfaction. The AI-enabled Helpdesk with inbuilt escalation matrix results in quick resolution of service requests, complaints and queries.
The Central Command Dashboard consolidates data from all Embassy properties, delivering valuable insights for decision-making.
I need to definitely put a Special word out for Mr. Chirag Boonlia, Group CTO, Embassy Group, for his vision of digital transformation. His vision has not only helped deliver exemplary technology experiences to Embassy group residents, but his insights have also had very deep impact on our product roadmap.
Outside India, some of the best residential buildings of Dubai, Mauritius and Singapore (Princess Towers, Anahita Properties, Hidd Al Saadiyat, etc.) some of world’s best property management and Owners Association Management firms like Knight Frank Singapore, Kingfield OAMS, Stratum, The Sustainable City, Pam Golding are also partnered with ADDA. ADDA has also ventured into USA, and Mexico since 2023.
IT Voice – What are the upcoming features or innovations planned for ADDA.io?
San Banerjee – In 2025 and beyond, the community management App market is poised for a massive transformation. AI-driven automation, smart security, financial transparency, IoT integration, and hyper-personalization are paving the way for smarter and more efficient communities. At the same time, the decline of ad-based, free apps underscores the importance of prioritizing security, privacy, and a seamless user experience.
Technology today is opening up many exciting possibilities – around AI, IoT, and more. ADDA.io is going to be in the forefront to bring these innovations to our customers.
Communities that embrace these emerging trends will experience better security, reduced operational costs, and higher resident satisfaction, making apartment living more convenient, transparent, and enjoyable.
IT Voice -How do you see the PropTech industry evolving in the next five years?
San Banerjee – Over the coming years, we anticipate the market expanding many times over due to India’s exponential rise in luxury houses. The property market in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is expanding globally as well. Additionally, there is a growing need for sophisticated software there as well. Thus we see ADDA outperforming itself in the next few years.
IT Voice -What role does AI and automation play in community management?
San Banerjee –Most best of breed housing society software available today uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help residents and community management personnel automate a number of tedious tasks. We’ve integrated AI into ADDA as well.
Residents can contact community staff in any language through the Community Helpdesk, and the AI will translate it into English. We are developing several other AI-enabled services in our incubation centres, such as AI-enabled vendor invoice management. Community accountants would greatly benefit from this capability, which would rapidly read vendor invoice details and assist in creating automatic accounting entries in ADDA.
IT Voice -How does ADDA.io differentiate itself from other community management platforms?
San Banerjee –Here are few areas in which ADDA.io is very different as compared to our competitors in the Indian market.
- Clean business model – It is widely known that Mygate and Nobrokerhood have gained popularity in the market by offering their software for free, and also by offering kickbacks to their customers. ADDA on the other hand has remained a true SaaS product – painstakingly building a clean Associations segment in India.
- Zero Ads/Spam – One of the main benefits of having a Community App is that, on one hand the Association can keep the residents updated on all Community updates, and on the other hand the residents can find all Community information – guidelines, forms (move in/out, renovations, etc.), sports amenity booking, community helpdesk updates, emergency numbers – all in one place. If this community App is filled with Ads, then it only serves one purpose – visitor verification. Other than this, residents avoid opening the App. Many even uninstall it for fear of by mistake clicking on any ad which might lead to data theft and becoming a victim of cybercrime.
- Global – Only Globally Trusted Housing Society ERP Product from India (Pioneers since 2009 – Having customers across India, USA, Singapore, Dubai, Mauritius, and 10+ countries).
- Advanced Feature Set – For example, ADDA’s AI Enabled community helpdesk lets residents speak out their queries/issues/complaints in any native language, with the AI translating it to English for the Community Managers or Association members. ADDA supports 35+ IoT integrations. Several advanced features have been built to cater to our global customers – which is today also benefitting Indian customers – example – advanced sports amenity management, guidelines and violation tracking, expense automations and P2P process and many more
- Profitable – ADDA is a profitable company, with revenue completely coming from software subscription.
IT Voice -What are some regulatory or legal challenges in this space?
San Banerjee – In the residential community space, there can be multiple legal and regulatory challenges. The problem is that the management committee often gets dragged into in these conflicts. There is not much clear clear governance in India around how gated communities should be managed. Among all states, only Maharastra provides detailed bylaws on managing cooperative housing societies. At ADDA, we therefore try to build technology which can help the management committees in not getting into any regulatory or legal challenges.
IT Voice -How has your experience at SAP, Capgemini, and TCS shaped your approach at ADDA.io?
San Banerjee – My career started with TCS at a time when it was undergoing Capability Maturity Model certification.. This exposure to CMM levels gave me the discipline of process automation in every work area. This helped us keep the ADDA team lean by extensive use of automation tools right from start. Capgemini USA was a consulting job which built Customer empathy in me and the knack to deep dive into the Customer’s problems in a short time and come up with creative solutions. This is inculcated in the DNA of the product management and the support teams. Finally SAP brought the product orientation and the understanding of ERP as a basic necessity of all organizations which is what led to the concept of ADDA – the ERP for Residential Communities.
IT Voice -What are the biggest leadership lessons you’ve learned while building ADDA.io?
San Banerjee – My biggest lesson learnt has been to commit to a Problem. To pick an unsolved Problem, solve it in the most elegant way possible and keeping it solved. Keeping it solved means constantly adapting the solution to changing market and technology. It is the job of the Leadership to keep this unwavering allegiance to the Problem, through highs and lows in the environment, and orient the entire organization to solving it.
We chose the problem of Associations and Developers to manage a Residential Community. This Problem has only grown larger with Indian Real Estate growing at a 5 year average of 38% YoY and geared to reach USD 1 Trillion by 2030.
IT Voice – How do you foster innovation within your team?
San Banerjee – We make sure all Teams are involved in understanding Customer problems deeply. Not just the Support and Product Management teams, but Sales, Marketing, and BackEnd development Teams. We prefer that ADDAites live in Apartment Community themselves and also participate in the Management Committee wherever possible.
With this continuous pulse of evolving customer problems each Team maintains a “Product Wishlist”. Anyone can come up with ideas that are captured in this Wishlist.. Each of these Wishlists are combed during the Product Roadmap meetings.
This creates a inclusive DNA of exciting innovation where every ADDAite feels empowered in shaping the future of the product.
IT Voice -What advice would you give to entrepreneurs looking to enter the PropTech space?
San Banerjee – PropTech is a Vertical. It needs genuine commitment to the Subject Matter in order to build winning solutions that last beyond a few years. Entrepreneurs entering this space must have the stamina to ride over multiple investment cycles, the resilience to build profitable business models that can fuel innovation even in the absence of investments during the low tides.
IT Voice – What are some key mistakes startups should avoid when building SaaS products for communities?
San Banerjee – Many Startups set out to build a Solution with a very surface understanding of the Problem. To many startups who have set out to build such products earlier, managing a Residential Community seems like a simple problem of Visitor Management or Maintenance Billing with some additional process automations. They later discovered the depth and breadth of the requirements to which they are hesitant to commit.
The most frequent mistake is to fall for the Advertisement business model – the Startup gives the SaaS Product for free and expects windfall revenues via monetizing Residents data or pushing ad notifications to them. It is now proven that of the external revenues that a large Apartment Community can earn, only 10% can be expected by advertising on whatever online App the Community is using.
