#ZealousTalks: Meet Karim Sakani

The Zealous team tapped Karim Sakani, CEO at Sakani - a real estate platform that aims to creatively depict the real estate landscape in Dubai.

What did Karim have to say about his venture? Discover below.

Q1: Can you tell us more about yourself, about Sakani and the problem it’s solving?

Hi, my name is Karim and I’m the CEO of Sakani. Sakani is a real estate platform that aims to creatively depict the real estate landscape in Dubai. When we talk about creatively depicting the real estate landscape, we’re talking about using data visualization, creative writing and imagery to get people to connect with the communities before they decide on where they want to rent or buy an apartment without an apartment, villa or townhouse in Dubai.

Q2:? How does Sakani bring back the real, in real estate??

So Sakani brings back the real in real estate by essentially eliminating a lot of fake listings and working with top brokerage firms only to make sure that people have access to the best information. High quality means that our customers are going to be happy and that’s the bottom line.?

Q3: Can you speak to the role of technology in the real estate industry, and how your business leverages technology to improve operations and enhance the customer experience?

Absolutely, so when we talk about technology, we need to look at the current experience and the current experience is a property inventory. So what we wanted to do, was give our users a framework to understand what the real estate landscape looks like and that framework consists of a profile for each community and what feeds into that profile is open data, data about sales, rental ROI, imagery, things that we pull from different places so that people can really understand true clicks, what a community means to them and whether that’s right for them.?

Q4: After 8 years of consulting with IBM, why proptech, and why now?

Real estate has been a passion for me for about 12 years now, and IBM was the vehicle or platform that gave me a lot of experience. When I graduated university, my head was in the clouds, my ideas were everywhere and my imagination was on fire. What IBM does or what it did for me after 8 years was give me a system to make sure that all of my creative energy is outputted to something that’s effective, operational and gets results. Now after 8 years of consulting, naturally I wanted a change, I wanted to test myself in the market in terms of business, technical networking - all these things that i have, I’d rather go out there and do things on my own and see if I can make magic happen.?

Q5: How did you meet your fellow Sakani co-founders and why do you think you make the dream team?

My Sakani co-founders are Nicole and Salim, Nicole is my sister and Salim I met through a friend. What makes us the dream team is that Nicole is super creative, she’s the one handling the marketing, Salim is structured - he’s the one handling legal and I’m obviously at the center of it, handling pretty much everything else.?

Q6: How would you go about getting your first customer, if you didn't have access to the internet??

So I think when it comes to sales, unless you’re Shutterstock or Box where you automatically need access to a product, you need to have a personal touch. In real estate, you’re always going to need to have a personal touch so where I would be is at the front door of someone’s home at 8 in the morning just knocking. Maybe not their home, I’d probably be at their office asking for a meeting.