Daifallah Al-Hasni was formerly the founder and CTO of Kinda Gulf Co, an integrated and automated real estate evaluation system. He has over 15 years of experience in B2B and B2G real estate solutions development focusing on user experience and AI in high-performance environments.
Can you introduce the Simaat platform to our readers?
Daifallah Al-Hasni: Simaat is a leading cloud-based prop-tech platform for property management that helps companies in the real estate sector manage their daily operations efficiently and in a better way. The current value of contracts on the Simaat platform has reached SAR2.5 billion to date, which is 1.7% of the actual market size.
How is Simaat positioned to support the development of the real estate sector?
Daifallah Al-Hasni: Property management is an expensive business and requires a high number of human resources and several different divisions to support the operations and customers. Simaat property management solutions provide automation for all operations using the latest technology, machine learning, big data, and fintech. These solutions eliminate human errors, save time, and reduce the cost of human resources as a result of automated operations. As a result, property management companies have the financial room to serve their customers in a better way.
As per Vision 2030, the application of digitalization and AI underpin the country’s revolution. How is the application of new technologies boosting the performance of the sector, and how can we consider Simaat as a case study within the industry it operates in?
Daifallah Al-Hasni: Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 helped the government sectors to improve their services to be part of the digitalized government. Simaat has recognized the importance of integrated government services and was the first to integrate with the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Housing, the central bank, and many more. These integration efforts boost the performance of operations, and real estate companies can do all their work from one platform.
Simaat recently signed a technical integration agreement with Ejar Network: what will be the impact of this partnership on your operations?
Daifallah Al-Hasni: The integration will improve the user experience and accelerate the registration of contracts from 15 minutes to 1 minute through the Simaat platform. It will also eliminate human errors by standardizing contracts and avoiding double entries of contracts on two platforms.
Simaat currently has more than 39,200 active real estate units; the platform involves the largest real estate property management companies in Saudi Arabia. How are you working to cultivate your existing network, and how are you expanding it?
Daifallah Al-Hasni: We view our customers as partners that we grow alongside, and they see Simaat as an added value for their business. We work to ensure this relationship provides mutual benefits, and this is the type of relationship that inspires more customers to join Simaat to be part of the successful partnership. In addition, we participate in local and regional events to promote our services.
What are the main challenges and obstacles to your consolidation and expansion plans? What is your strategy to overcome them?
Daifallah Al-Hasni: Expansion requires investment in proptech technology, and the current benchmark of our services does not exist in the world the way Simaat operates because it is a unique service that gathers all the government-required services for real estate on one platform. Our platform was developed in-house with regional needs in mind. We are in talks with different investors individually to understand what investors can add to Simaat.
Can you share your main targets and objectives set in your 2022/23 agenda?
Daifallah Al-Hasni: We have achieved all our targets in 2022, which include building solid communication and integration with different governmental sectors and expanding our base of customers. In 2023, we aim to double our market share to 3.4%, which is equivalent to SAR5 billion in contract value, and we expect to reach that by continuing to focus on the growth of Simaat customers and expanding our services to different sectors of real estate.
