Giri Devanur Podcast Transcript
Giri Devanur joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Giri Devanur. Giri Devanur is the CEO and founder of reAlpha, a real estate investment firm based in Columbus, Ohio, focused on democratizing the 1.2 trillion short term rental market originally from India.
Giri led Ameri100, Inc to a successful IPO on NASDAQ. Scaling the company to 50 million in revenue in just four years. He was awarded the 2017 Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the year for his achievements. Giri holds a master’s in technology management from Columbia university and has completed executive programs at Harvard law school and MIT, a mentor at Columbia university since 2015.
He is also an author and blogger with contributions featured in Forbes. His book, nothing to NASDAQ chronicles his journey from arriving in America with just 65 to leading a NASDAQ IPO. Giri hosts the how to who podcast interviewing experts across various fields with 25 years of entrepreneurial experience.
He has founded multiple companies, including Ivega corporation and when hire Inc focusing on technology and professional services.
Well, good afternoon, Giri, welcome to the show!
Giri Devanur: Good afternoon, Brian! How are you?
Brian Thomas: Amazing. Thank you for making the time, and you’re actually on the East Coast here in New Jersey.
I’m in Kansas City. I know we’re only an hour behind, but gosh, it’s getting pretty darn late for you out there. So again, I really, really appreciate the time, Giri and Giri, let’s jump into your first question here. Your journey from India to leading a successful IPO on NASDAQ is truly inspiring. Can you share some key moments from your book, nothing to NASDAQ that highlight the challenges and triumphs you faced along the way?
Giri Devanur: So, Brian, you know, like I’ve been a tech entrepreneur, multiple ventures, et cetera. So, you know, once you are an entrepreneur, you are an entrepreneur, right? So, I launched with my brother, Ameri100, which was a CP kind of consulting company. And that was in 2013, and we set a goal to get it listed on NASDAQ in seven years.
But you know, we achieved that goal in under four years. So, we scaled the business from zero to 50 million in revenue, and then got it listed on NASDAQ towards the end of 2017. And after we rang the bell, I got out and you know, I started investing in other companies, etc. The journey to, you know, get onto the NASDAQ podium, obviously, you know, was not rosy.
I grew up in a small town by the name Chikmagalur in India. So, I started my journey there and I did my undergrad in computer engineering in India. Then I came to the US in 1991 with hardly any money. And then, you know, that’s the journey. And I’ve been fortunate and lucky to achieve whatever I set out as the goal.
Brian Thomas: It’s an amazing story, but you know, I can tell the way you explained that you had a vision, and you had some goals and you set those and sometimes you beat those you met or you beat the expectations, but I really, really appreciate that. It is truly inspiring as I had mentioned earlier. So, thank you. And Geary, as the CEO and founder of ReAlpha, you’re bringing the latest tech to the real estate industry.
What motivated you to enter this space and how does ReAlpha plan to transform the real estate investment landscape, especially with ReAlpha’s 0 percent commission platform, Flare?
Giri Devanur: Good question, Brian. After you know, getting that first company to NASDAQ, I, you know, like we, as I mentioned, we did it in our four, and then I was looking for my next big thing.
And I was dabbling around with a variety of technologies and stuff like that. I figured out that real estate as an industry, this is the world’s largest asset class, right? In that industry, the adoption of technology has been probably very slow. So, when I realized that, I was thinking about what to do. And then one day, one of my friends in the, towards the end of 2020 called me asking, you know, she’s going to make a purchase of a property and so on and so forth.
And that led me to, you know, dig into the entire end to end process of buying a property, selling a property, et cetera. That is the origin of re alpha. So we launched ReAlpha on November 1st of 2020. With the vision of bringing these technologies into real estate vertical and we started dabbling with AI and so on.
I mean, you know, today everybody talks about AI as if it is new. When I was doing my undergrad back in 1990, almost 34 years back, my subject elective was artificial intelligence. And lo and behold, all the concepts that we studied then are even in, you know implementation mode even today. So, we implemented in re alpha different levels of AI, et cetera.
Then we were, you know, initially debating about democratizing investments into the Airbnb kind of properties. So, we went ahead and bought, you know, like a bunch of properties and experimented our own algorithms and so on. Finally, we wanted to really scale it to a billion and a half kind of purchasing, but, you know, we had made one, you know, miscalculation.
That was, we assumed that the interest rates will be in the 3. 5, maybe 4 percent kind of the horizon. We did not expect the interest rates to, you know, shoot up the way it went up till late last year, almost towards 8 percent kind of. So that hundred percent interest rate, you know, like we were lucky enough in the beginning itself, when it crossed four, I realized that, you know, like, hey, you know, our CFO at that time, Mike and I debated that, you know, it’s not going to look good.
And we decided to sell all our properties over the next few months. And then, you know, we decided to become a set light company and focused on continuing building our AI platform. And then early last year, around March, we applied to the SEC and, you know, got the approval on October 1st of last year and October 23rd, we got it listed on NASDAQ.
That is the journey so far. And then, you know, you asked me about zero fee brokerage, etc. The AI agent that we have built is named Claire. Commission less. AI for real estate. By the way, uh, we are now listed on NASDAQ. We got listed on October 23rd last year. Our ticker on NASDAQ is AIRE. So, this is, you know, Claire is commission less AIRE.
And we were again, you know, surprised that the NAR lawsuit settlement that happened, regulatory shift. This is one of the massive disruptions that have happened in the real estate industry. In a very, very long time till last year it used to be at least $100 billion. Real estate brokerage was paid out.
And suddenly, you know, like on August 17th that settlement got completed. And you know, like now if you want to buy a property, you need to sign your own brokerage agreement with the broker. And then you know, you need to agree on what kind of fee you have to pay. Earlier, it used to be seller who would pay 6 percent and 3 and 3 used to get split between buy side real estate agent and sell side real estate agent.
That is history now. So, you know, you need to find your own broker and so on. So what we did was, like every other industry that has happened, if we go back in time in the stock brokerage industry, right? People, I mean, companies used to charge between one and a quarter to one and a half, even sometimes two percent for doing a trade.
And then Schwab came in with a 49 a trade kind of mechanism followed very quickly by E Trade and Scottrade and eventually Robinhood, which brought it down to 0 percent commission. The same thing has happened in other industries like, you know, travel agencies as well as advertising and so on and so forth.
When you look at all these industries, eventually the brokerage goes down to zero. So, what we thought, Brian, was we launched Clare as a platform, AI platform for buying a home or selling a home end to end. We made it for the buyer’s 0 percent commission from a brokerage perspective. So we launched our platform a few weeks back.
We are testing it in Florida, and we dropped our super app real estate super app just two days back. We are onto something, you know, really great because this solution that we have built is going to change the way people buy and sell homes. The advantage of the platform that we have built, this can be truly global because I was in Japan, Singapore, Dubai, and India last month.
What I noticed was in each of those markets, everything the same, right? Except the data pipe and some regulatory issues. So, we have a global opportunity in the future to, you know, go after. So now we are really excited about, you know, the platform that we have built in ReAlpha and launched it very recently.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. You know, we’ve seen a lot of disruption in the last decade. You know, you look at some of the big things like Uber and Lyft and Airbnb, but we’re taking it to a whole new level now. And you just outlined some of that, which you’re doing with AI. And I think again, we’re giving power back to the people.
You know, I will talk about my platform here a little bit. You know, we’re built on blockchain, we’re web three, actually. And I believe in DeFi and believing in giving power back to the people. And in my opinion, that’s what you’re doing here. And I think that’s amazing what you’re doing as far as disruption. So, thank you for that.
And Giri, as a mentor at Columbia university and host of the how to who podcast. You’re deeply involved in sharing knowledge and fostering talent. What are some of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned from mentoring and podcasting?
Giri Devanur: That’s a loaded question, Brian. See, being a mentor means actually technically you are a student, right?
Learning never ends. You know, like you, you have to constantly learn every day, the expansion, massive expansion of the knowledge that is happening. Is just mind numbing. You and I are old enough to remember that, you know, like the entire newspaper used to be in, you know, like 10, 20 pages of physical paper, you know, today millions and maybe billions of pages of content is being generated.
Right. So that makes you humble. Why the technical title may be a mentor. Actually, you know, like when you are hanging around with other people, you tend to learn faster and, you know, like it, it keeps you abreast. So, Columbia university mentorship is one of them. Every year I get to, you know, mentor somebody and then, you know, like every time I get you know, fascinated by the new things that, you know, the next generations are doing regarding, you know, like my, how to who podcast.
My quest on finding the subconscious biases that we have, for example, in life, we are always presented with either an obstacle or an opportunity, right? So our subconscious, when we come across an opportunity or an obstacle, the first thing that comes to our head is how do I handle this issue, right? And that is where all the challenges of life start.
So, you know, I ran a series of podcasts interviewing a bunch of CEOs and, you know, really qualified people who are more knowledgeable than me. And, you know, like we realized that instead of asking how, if you ask the who question, then, you know, the revolution begins. And that, you know, led me to, you know, multiple lessons, et cetera.
And then, you know, like that kind of, you know, arrived at a solution early last month, I was in Nepal, and I was giving a Ted talk and that was about finding this answer.
Brian Thomas: That’s just amazing. Love the story. You know, you kind of broke a few things down there for us as far as, you know, mentorship and I’m not really looked at it that way, but as a mentor, you are still a student, you’re still learning and your constant quest to search for knowledge or search for that answer.
And the how to who podcast is kind of was a story there as well, as you were looking for an answer and you found what you needed after, I think it was a couple dozen episodes, but I appreciate the share. And Giri, last question of the evening, your entrepreneurial experience spans over 25 years, including founding multiple companies in technology and professional services.
How has the entrepreneurial landscape changed over the years and what new opportunities do you see emerging for startups today?
Giri Devanur: In the, I mean, you know, my first venture, I started way back in 1997 and, you know, we rode the dot com wave and, you know, crash and stuff like that, right? So, the cycles have remained the same as they say, right?
History doesn’t repeat itself, but you know, it rhymes. So, you know, whatever happened in the previous cycles will continue. So, we saw in the good old days, if a company added just a com and then, you know, that became, you know, 10x, 20x kind of, you know, value multiplication that had happened. I think, you know, today the same is happening with the AI and related industries.
So eventually, you know, like all these, you know, hype and buzzwords, et cetera will cool down and then truly transformative companies will emerge. For example, you know, way back, you know when the. com, et cetera happened, you know, like there was a wave of, uh, search engines at one point in time, there were 22 search engines.
Google was like the 22nd or 23rd search engine and Google became a multi-trillion dollar company out of that crash. And then, you know fast forward, you know, 2008 crash and stuff like that, that led to Airbnb, Uber and companies like that. Now with the last, you know, couple of years, OpenAI, Anthropic and you know, like many other AI engines, et cetera.
So, this cycle will continue, but, you know, with AI and, you know, like latest technologies that are there, whether it is the blockchain or any of the crypto, DeFi, et cetera, et cetera, right. All of them will create the next generation of companies. My statement that I’ve been making constantly, Brian, is in this wave, at least 100 of the Fortune 500 companies will get displaced, but we don’t know which are the new 100 companies that will emerge.
We in ReAlpha, also aspire to be one of those replacing kind of companies. And I believe that, you know, like another 99 other aspirants will get to, you know, become a Fortune 500 company because of the massive tsunami of the change that is coming. The change is coming in multiple ways. Right. Whether it is, you know, like marketing, you know, marketing is probably one of the massive changes in terms of content, you know, delivery, distribution, creation, et cetera, et cetera.
Right. That is one part. Second is legal. In fact, you know, one of our legal counsels, he was, you know, he was telling me that, you know, legal industry might change, you know, 50%, you know, 50 percent of the head count may not be needed kind of. And then, you know, like finance, you know, massive changes, obviously.
And finally, you know, talking about technology itself, I believe that the, see earlier we had, you know we used to say hypothetically that two of the three, the two of the three being faster, cheaper, better, right? Now, because of the AI and the globalized resource pool that is out there, you can achieve faster, better, cheaper at a 10x, 100x kind of.
One other thing, you know, which is fascinating that is happening, Brian, is Mark Anderson had made Netscape and now, you know, uh, Horowitz, uh, Anderson Horowitz Venture Fund. Mark had made a statement that one good programmer is equal to 30 average programmers. But you know, with all these copilot and, you know, every other coding revolution that is happening, my take is one good professional is equal to 100 average professionals in any field.
It is not just limited to technology. So, what this will do is we will see the emergence of, you know, really massive disruptive companies changing, you know, full industries themselves. Maybe, you know, 1%, 10%, 10 percent teams will become billion-dollar kind of companies. Maybe eventually a small, maybe hundred people company will become a trillion-dollar kind of company.
So that is the massive shift that we are seeing in the last two, three cycles of entrepreneurial disruptions that have happened.
Brian Thomas: It’s amazing. It really is. And you know, you talked about disruption and fortune 500 companies that have gone by the wayside. And I know, I think four or five years ago, there was a statistic on since 2000, the year 2000, I think 52 percent of the fortune 500s that were a fortune 500 in the year 2000 are now gone or bankrupt.
And I can see this continuing to happen. And, and in your case, I hope ReAlpha. Emerges as one of the leaders, that would be so amazing to be part of something just on this podcast that I got to speak to, you know, Giri about ReAlpha. I think that’s awesome. And that’s what I love to do is get in the middle of all that and share in the stories that come through this podcast.
So Giri, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Giri Devanur: Thank you very much, Brian. Have a wonderful day. And you know, this was a great conversation. Thank you very much.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Giri Devanur Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
