The construction industry of India is said to be at a turning point, whereby it is predicted to grow up to be a 600-plus billion-dollar industry by 2022. In fact, as per this year, after agriculture, the construction industry is the largest employer of workers. Thus, providing jobs to millions of Indians and contributing at a steady rate to the Indian GDP
However, what’s currently lacking in the construction realm is the boom of a technological revolution. To get to the 600 billion market goal by 2022, there is a need to have a tectonic shift in the norms of traditional construction.
Lack of transparency and trust along with ineffective business models and treacherous construction processes has left this industry highly disorganized and as a result, stagnated its growth.
Seeing the issues and of the current construction industry Ar. Sujeet Kumar Mishra, the founder of Thikedaar.com, an architecture graduate of BIT Mesra, decided to tap into the potential and revolutionize it by bringing in both transparency and efficiency through the medium of tech. He designed an algorithm that aims to answer all the unanswered questions in the construction sector.
He partnered with Ar. Jenie Singh, an alumnus of BIT Mesra and NIT Durgapur, offers transparent construction and building services to its customers and tap the potential of this construction tech start-up. With graduation in architecture and post-graduation in business administration, she is an expert in Marketing and Communication.
Through their start-up Thikedaar.com, the duo aims to digitize and bring online the entire hassle process of pre-construction, from material selection, payment gateways to periodic updates. They want to help customers be prepared and well-informed about what they are paying for before they make Thikedaar.com as their choice. Introducing the idea of an ‘Instant Free Quote’, by choosing the desired building materials, customers will be able to get an estimate of their building’s construction cost before making a final decision of opting Thikedaar.com as their builder or construction partner.
A remarkable algorithm taking care of the entire working of the system developed by Ar. Sujeet himself thus helping to reduce human error and more so human manipulation.
Taking away the hotchpotch of employing a different person for each step of construction, Thikedaar.com provides an end to end service, from design to the final construction. Thikedaar.Com is a complete package for Construction Projects.
When asked about his motivation to start this company, Sujeet said that “People have very little idea about construction but almost everyone is involved with its working and affected by it. Mostly everyone dreams to have a home in his/her life. The margin of contractors is too heavy because they quote just a random number which demotivates people from building their own homes. Even after being an expert in this sector, I was speechless when people asked me these queries, so I decided to provide them a solution.”
THE STORYLINE OF CONSTRUCTION NEEDED TO CHANGE
Statistics from CREDAI show that more than 90 percent of projects face unfair pricing, zero smart technology, lack of labour safety measures, delays, no transparency, uncertified experts as consultants, shortage of materials and debris disposal ground, builder withdrawals, irregular updates, and a lack of official approval knowledge.
These all sum up together to make the construction industry a trust – deficit industry which in turn causes many consequences in the society. Hence, to make the society free from such consequences, Ar. Sujeet came up with Thikedaar.com which has an online system of the end-to-end management & ownership of the project on behalf of the customer.
Laying the roots of his company in his home state-Bihar, Ar. Sujeet chose to let go of the fast success in the metropolis and decided to initiate his company from Patna and then expand nationwide. Discussing this unprecedented move, Ar. Sujeet states that “since I belong to Bihar, I thought Bihar must taste this innovation first, as it has been like my guardian. We will be scaling it to other parts of India. But let Bihar get the first experience and I hope that Bihar will extend its love for us”
Ar. Sujeet states that due to poor and disorganized processes of construction, the quality of an urban landscape and individual safety also end up taking a huge hit. Through this innovation, he looks at how designing individual units could potentially lead to overall better landscaping of a town or semi-urban area. This, however, is possible only if the sector is organized and the system is transparent.
By providing end to end service, both founder and co-founder aim that their company will be able to deliver a standard of living to not only the wealthy but also the more vulnerable sections of society. They have this belief that everyone deserves a habitable and well-constructed place of their own that they can call home. Since a user will not be charged for any other services like Design, Supervision, etc., this will be achieved effectively.
Looking into the name itself of the company, Ar. Sujeet wanted to in a sense facilitate this idea of people across economic stratospheres having access to affordable homes. That’s why instead of going with a fancy anglicized name, he chooses Thikedaar.com, wherein Thikedaar in Hindi means ‘contractor’, a word that is very common and well known within the construction industry. Adding the .com however, was more of a tactical decision, ensuring the nature of his start-up being a primarily digital service provider that implicates on-site production and construction
When asked about his choice for the name Ar. Sujeet looks back into his past and says ‘We aim to make this service accessible to everyone even the slum people, so keeping a fancy name which they cannot even pronounce would have been created a psychology that we are too big to do their jobs. Thikedaar has been derived from Thekedaar and because Indians have a habit of pronouncing words in their style hence, Thikedaar. However, I added the “Dot Com” to represent we are a real estate tech start-up. A contractor should proudly say that they are thekedaar, sorry Thikedaar and understand that their contribution to the economy is as valuable as anyone else”
Laying his foundation on changing urban and semi-urban landscapes, facilitating transparency, along with quality and a respectable healthy standard of living. Thikedaar.com is set to make tectonic shifts in the construction industry and reimagine the way we build our homes and that’s why Thikedaar Dot Com Private Limited is one start-up that we all need to start paying attention to.