Mandeep Sodhi is the founder and CEO of Sydney Australia fintech startup Hashching an online proptech home loan marketplace.
We talk with Mandeep about how he came up with this practical idea based on a pain point he personally felt in his own personal life and how he has been able to execute on that idea over the last three years.
Check out Hashchings equity crowdfunding going on until June 15, 2018, via https://equitise.com/hashching
The company has build a network of over 600 independent mortgage brokers to pre negotiating special rates with over 60 individual lenders to the back office technology that makes it all work.
We speak to Mandeep about how he built his team which provides excellent support and service!
Mandeep was named one of the coolest 100 people in Australian tech back in 2016 emerging star list in the annual Fintech list by Business Insider AU
In August 2014, he decided to buy his first home. As a loyal bank employee, he reached out for the staff discount. At the time, he would boast to his friends about the special discounts he was entitled to as an employee of the bank. A few days later he found out from his friend that they had secured a better rate from the bank that Mandeep worked for. He asked himself the question how come his friend got a better rate? The bank simply replied, ‘Because your friend used a mortgage broker.’ Their answer made me even more frustrated, so I started to look at the mortgage broker model in greater detail.
From his research, he could see how much value mortgage advisers were providing their customers. Not only were they saving customers more time by taking away the hassle of completing documentation etc. brokers were securing better rates.
launch: August 2015
what: online marketplace connecting borrowers to local mortgage brokers.
Describe: a pure Fintech play
– like: operating an Uber style model where consumers are connected to a mortgage broker who comes direct to their home.
– online mortgage marketplace that shows and compares deals posted by mortgage brokers, rather than the lending institutions themselves. The current pool represents more than
What: Australia’s first online marketplace allowing consumers to access home loan deals without having to shop around.
Former banker Sodhi found they had home loans from the same bank but each got a different deal.
Hashching provides a more consumer-friendly and more efficient
mortgage broking market. Their goal is to eliminate friction faced by so many customers that deal with the home loan settlement process
Haschings value proposition: bypass the big banks get a better home loan deal
Distribution Network – how do you sign up 60 lenders, including the big four banks. And over 600 brokers Fairly labor intensive
Model Bank lender officers vs brokers
Backed by VC firms H2 Ventures (January 2015 ), Picus Capital, and Sapien Ventures,
Raising money: The company scored $1 million in funding from Sapien Ventures (Victor Jiang)
Pivot – You joined H2 Ventures in January 2015,
initially, you were going to work with the banks.
– We approached four of the banks who basically said;
We are happy to work with you guys, but our advisers are only available from Monday to Friday during operating hours only. We do not call clients on Saturday and Sunday or nights.
Consumers need the convenience of a broker coming to their house on the weekend. So, we quickly pivoted the model to service mortgage brokers. More than 50 percent of loans are written by mortgage brokers so we had a huge market to target.
Technology Talk
Hasching tools?
Dashboard
Chat
Keeping track of deals
Signing up brokers and consumers on site proprtiary v outside vendors
Paperwork
Team:
hire software developers, product developers, a data scientist and sales and marketing staff
Regulators: educating regulators on what you are doing ?
Partnerships:
CGU Insurance – customers who settle on hashching get 25% off their home insurance premium from HashChing if when purchase a CGU policy.
home insurance – which is a compulsory part of the property purchase process. Once for a new 12-month CGU Insurance policy, settlement must occur within three months of the insurance purchase, customers get an email with a link to buy a CGU policy after their loan is approvedTitlexchange partnership –
Legal paperwork – digital conveyancing. – now offering the services of electronic conveyancing marketplace Titlexchange, with the pilot limited to Victoria for now before a general rollout later, the bottleneck in the traditional home purchase process.
Issue: Borrowers are at the mercy of conveyancers, who can sometimes drag the process out unnecessarily and worse – charge more for their own delay.
How does integration into the Hashshing platform work
allows users to access fixed-price conveyancing through Titlexchange without having to go offline to provide ID and personal data.
New South Wales Government in Australia (Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business John Barilaro )
Provides you a strategic growth loan of $700,000
focus job creation – help create 46 jobs over the next five years.
NSW to overcome barriers to finance –
about making smart investments
allow good business ideas and businesses to grow
Equity crowdfunding and wanting to stay independent of the banks. Hashching is raising more capital via equity crowd funding.
-Equitise
HashChing equity crowdfunding offer is live until 15th June 2018 – offer
– now doing an equity crowdfunding on equites platform
– a venture capital fund started to attract cash from Chinese migrant investors who need to make mandatory investments and who themselves tend to be entrepreneurs.
NSW loan helps you hire more staff and secure the resources needed to keep up and scale the business quickly, as well as develop new products,”
More products v focus v more territories
Growth incredible since August of 2015 settled more than 2000 loans and is growing at over 700 per cent year-over- year.
NSW exceptionally helpful. process great
firm understanding of the business model.
Dealing NSW jobs loan v was dealing with a VC big difference
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/coolest-people-in-australian-tech-2016-10#KQxOrG3jDGq7jhB6.99
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