AddA Software- Bringing Residential Communities Together

AddA Software- Bringing Residential Communities Together | San Banerjee

Apartment community app is one super technology that has helped bridge the apartment community gap. It has allowed residents to have a seamless digital connect. With just a few taps on the smartphone, a great deal of hassle is eliminated and has allowed people convenience. With the ample of its features, this new technology sure is building communities! 

Featuring for The Enterprise World’s this issue of Top Real Estate Companies to Watch in 2022 is AddA Software, a platform helping build and connect communities. 

About AddA Software- 

ADDA – the Community SuperApp is the flagship product of 3Five8 Technologies – a Bangalore head-quarter company with offices in Mumbai, Dubai and Singapore. The company develops and sells one of the most comprehensive Community Management SaaS and Property Management SaaS products. With about 1 Million end users, the company has established its presence across six countries, with owners, tenants and villa communities mastering the application for seamless processes. 

The Software is subscribed to Property Management Companies, Owners Association Management Companies and Developers who develop and maintain townships or smart cities. It also has a Subscriber-base of Self-Managed Associations. 

Apart from the ADDA SaaS platform, 3Five8 Services is the other arm of the Company that provides Enterprise Customers with Custom Solutions built on top of the SaaS platform. 

There is one famous African proverb that says- 

“It takes a village to raise a child.”

In the Urban Cities, Apartment Communities are those Villages. A piece of land on which tens or hundreds of families live a harmonious life.

A child always has a playmate here, every festival is celebrated by all, challenges of daily life are faced together as neighbors with a strong glue of shared common wealth – the value of their property, their life’s savings, the place which is at the centre of their workplace, school, and favorite hangouts.

The Apartment Community is also a registered organisation – collecting common funds towards paying vendors for maintenance or building new infrastructure, paying Taxes, handling disputes internal as well as external.

The biggest difference in this organisation being its leaders. These are the Owners elected to be in the Managing Committee. They spend scarce personal time in placing operational processes, evaluating expense decisions, executing projects for common welfare without looking for selfish gains. Some of them learn altogether new skill e.g., accounting to do this! While they receive loud applause, they also receive louder doubts that often make their job look thankless.

“We believe in their courage, and their drive to build that dream neighborhood!”

It is for these Apartment Residents and their Managing Committees that Team ADDA Software dedicate their life’s work. 

The Hurdles to Success- 

Starting in the year 2009, AddA Software has been working relentlessly towards bringing residential communities together by connecting them online. But hardships come along the way when you choose the path of passion. And these hardships are the only thing that keep motivating you to move forward. 

Looking at the past decade, community living, specifically the modern high-rise living is something that has evolved very fast. For 3Five8 Technologies, the main challenge was about building a product that will ingrain the best practices of a fast-evolving community management space. Another difficult task was to wire in all the flexibility and agility required for different strata regulations across multiple cities and countries. 

With a completely different and innovative in-build accounting module, it was a mighty task to ensure that it can adapt easily to the country-specific compliances. And with it also came the challenge of ensuring personal data privacy compliances of each country while developing the private social network for community and visitor management modules. 

Treading every path lightly, and blocking problems with the best innovative solutions, AddA Software is today building communities. 

Stable, Strong Growth- 

AddA Software started out by building and selling exclusively to the self-managed associations. Despite of being a long-tail of the customer segment, the decision was taken with the intention that the product will develop with inputs from end-users- that is the property owners who form the association. 

This decision was meticulously adhered to for years, despite low ARPU from the self-managed associations. As a result, ADDA Software got built into the Product it is today, which accurately captures the pain points of Property Buyers and Tenants, who are the End-Users of the Built Environment. ADDA Software’s sales was started for Corporate Customers – Companies that manage Associations/Communities, in 2017. The value of the Product built from End-User inputs was recognised by Corporate Customers and this triggered the true Sales growth.  

“After 2017, the Product started delighting companies who manage Real Estate Communities and were using manual processes or outdated software.”

These customers started using the Product rapidly in Dubai, Singapore, Mauritius and India.  

The below graphs show YoY growth of the AddA Software. 

Their Products and Services- 

The Products in the ADDA Software Suite: 

ADDA App – the SuperApp for Apartment/Villa Resident. 

At the Back-End of the ADDA App is the ADDA SaaS Suite comprises of: 

ADDA Essential: Helpdesk, Communication, Meeting Management 

ADDA Books: Billing, Collection, Expenses, Taxes, Accounting.  

ADDA Mini CAFM: Asset and Inventory Management, Task Management, Staff Management 

ADDA Clubhouse: Amenities and Events Booking  

ADDA GateKeeper: Visitor & Parcel Management 

3Five8 Services – Integration APIs, Custom Integrations, Branded Resident App and other Custom Solutions. 

In the Indian Market, the focus is mainly on Gate Management. This is catered to by ADDA Software GateKeeper. Most other providers do not have Strong products other than Gate 

Management. ADDA is unique in its Comprehensiveness. It is the only ONE solution that any Community needs for all its management software needs. 

Also, ADDA Software is unique in being the only one with INTEGRATED Accounting Management.  This is where its Bill Generation (maintenance, sinking, utility) is 100% automated, with integrated Payment Gateway and integrated in-built Accounting. Even the Accounting entries are also 100% automated in the Billing-Collection-Accounting workflow. 

It is the Jewel in the ADDA suite where even if the entire Staff or Management Committee were to not show up for work for months, the Funds Inflow and Income Accounting of the Community will continue uninterrupted! It gives ultimate Financial Security to each of its subscribing Communities.  

The Next Big Thing-

There are multiple changes brought about in the past 3-5 years.  

First off Covid showed the value of Community Living. More residents of independent houses are shifting to Community Living – be it Apartments, Villas or Senior Citizen living.  Community Farmhouses have also become popular. So the focus of Residential is now on “Community”. 

Secondly, most developing Urban Cities are increasingly becoming heavily cosmopolitan due to immigration. Different nationalities and cultures living in a Community are most common and this has brought sophistication and interesting challenges for Community Management.  The challenges are in terms of Communication, Common Area rules, Amenities Event management, etc. 

As a result, while Real Estate Software earlier focussed on “Build” (with AutoCAD, Project Mgmt. software, etc.) and on “Sell” (CRMs, Marketing Automation software, etc.), now the focus is on the “Live” part of Real Estate! More Real Estate Developers are realizing the value of continuing Customer Experience beyond Booking and leveraging Customer Engagement for referrals, cross-sell and up-sell. 

In these fast-changing paradigms, Adda Software’s focus remains on the journey of the Home Owner. From the time he/she books the home from the developer, the team keenly observes the pain points in their journey throughout the lifetime of the residential community. 

“With Residential Real Estate development moving to large format townships and smart cities, with smart automations, our Products and Services are evolving to keep our Customers always ahead.”

San Banerjee – The Leading Force

CEO

Sangeeta (San) Banerjee is the Co-Founder and CEO of AddA Software, a SuperApp for the complete management of apartment complexes. 

With an MBA degree in Finance and Decision Sciences from Louisiana State University, USA, and a BE in Electrical and Electronics from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai, San started her career as a System Analyst from TCS. Here she was in charge of jobs making millions of dollars every day for BFSI clients. She has also had a successful stint with SAP, where she worked as a Consultant. 

“I eventually decided to become an entrepreneur and incepted AddA Software in 2009 with my husband, Venkat Kandaswamy.”

With an aim to make the company a global leader in the housing society management space, San plans on deploying AddA’s management and security products across all gated residential communities around the world. Being an extremely diligent professional, San believes that each team member of AddA Software has played a vital role in making the company gain a solid ground in the market. 

“My team is the backbone of my enterprise.”

San’s Advice to the Budding Entrepreneurs- 

“Money is very important to build a business, but more important is TIME. Give yourself the Time to build the Solution/Business of your Vision. 

Don’t fall into the *corn race. Instead ask yourself – how can my Business ensure that the Problem that I went out to solve, stays solved! There have been many unicorns in spaces where the core problem still remains unsolved.”

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