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Lessons from UK Fintech on the importance of becoming the rails and how they apply to the future of real estate along the Riviera Maya

In my preceding post I referred to a critical lesson I learned while building my last tech start up in London. I wanted to add a little meat to the bones so to speak and reach out to the wider Mexican community for some wise advice in the process.

Now let me set the boundaries: My focus starts at residential real estate land sales and residential private construction along 210km of coastline on the Mexican Caribbean coast. I’m no real estate expert but it’s the sector I now work in and have done for around 18 months. I know it well, from the ground up and so the basis of my logic is formed at the micro level.

However, if you scale back and expand to a more macro view I suspect what you will find, as I have done only tangentially, that much of what I propose here and in my next post goes way beyond this coastline.

I’m not a gambler but I am an entrepreneur and I would bet serious money, as I have my time and energy on the understanding that much of I what write will resonate across Mexican, LATAM and quite possibly further.

So linking back to my earlier post I outlined how at the time the then company I founded, Kwanji, an FX marketplace for SME’s sourcing low cost foreign exchange from multiple providers was using the Currencycloud as our financial services layer. Many of you will know them. For those that don’t they just happen to be the ‘financial rails’ for many of the household challenger fintech platforms we know and love today.

Cards, online banking, FX remittances, mobile wallets, around the World you name it the Currencycloud or some other player like them were involved. Transferwise used to be a client of theirs when we were. I was even present at an awards dinner on the invitation of the Currencycloud hen the company received one of their first awards. One of the founders picked it up, I can’t remember which, and now the have a cabinet full of awards and judging from the graphic below a $3.5 Billion USD valuation. Not bad.

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Leaving us with the age old conundrum, which came first chickens or eggs?

I doubt we’d have the diversity, scope and scale of modern fintech unicorns, incredible brands leading the charge to revolutionise our daily financial lives. How many products powered by these solutions have you used knowingly or unknowingly in the past days, weeks or months?

Many of the new breed of fintech unicorns across LATAM and Africa would not exist today without them. I take my hat off.

But I remembered, the lesson:

If at all possible become the rails

So with my former fintech background and my personal struggle as a local English only speaking broker with the failed back office support, no digital payments, interfering lawyers, lost contracts, sloth like contract processing, single language content “WTF seriously DUDE it’s 2021” and a whole list of other inconveniences my mind went to what if I had the rails to get my job done faster, across more borders, with less time spent, greater efficiency, so I could spend more time doing what I love?

You know fishing, scuba diving, learning to sail, chilling on the beach with my girls, or playing in Tulum.

Hey don’t blame me. I just live here.

You could too, feel free, stop by.

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But quite simply what if there as a system that cut out the unnecessary bullshit you know?

An underlying provider or architecture, designed to operate as the much needed engine to the train that could provide me, others like and every other industry stakeholders with access to the right combination of technological tools and advances in modern marketing expertise to compete on the global scale across multiple jurisdictions and languages?

Technology is not the limiting factor

Who am i?

Over the last 18 months and counting I lived and worked alongside my wife in residential real estate.

In that time:

Between Sept 2019, my wife and partner has built and manages a team of 26 brokers that have sold 546 residential lots creating a a siloed $346 MN USD private residential construction industry. That is totally ignored and growing at a staggering ~$8.5 MN USD a month.

I’ve learnt Im really so/so at selling lots, which is cool I can leave that to ‘the shark’. I’m a dedicated entrepreneur however and over the last 6-8 months I’ve personally built the Otochio pilot platform and business model from the ground up to dominate the genesis of a multi-billion dollar residential and construction industry and solve wider pain points.

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By delivering the kind of rails that are set revolutionise and excite residential real estate across the Riviera Maya in the following key ways:

Empower the 250+ mostly Spanish speaking amateur brokers along the coast with the right combination of omni-channel tools and expertly drafted marketing & digital content to sell more inventory, faster with less BS across multiple jurisdictions & languages.

E-contracting with full regulatory compliance with secure proper document management

Accept payments from all points of the compass from any device, immediately lowering the bar needed to close the deal. The quicker they pay the quicker we close.

Allow the existing 42+ residential project owners, with billions in locked up inventory the ability to upload their projects onto the Otochio platform for more efficient data driven based sales & marketing with optimised inventory management.

Allow anyone in the World, be they an influencer, socialite or entrepreneur the ability to become a digital broker or a 100% pure referral node in the hottest real estate market in the World in minutes. Lifetime payouts.

Concierge services for HNWI’s, e-logistics to take the pain away from moving and fintech innovation around credit, finance, loans & local Otochio branded discount cards providing an additional level of convenience for both local retailers and new residents

All earmarked for deployment on the Otochio platform. We are really excited about how we can add real value to the lives and business of residential real estate industry stakeholders here on the ground.

I personally witnessed the destruction caused at the local level by recent events. And while we cannot go back in time, we can better prepare ourselves for a future which if properly for, by laying the rails for exponential growth, we will all profit from.

The Otochio SaaS model, is just one string to the Otochio value proposition. The 2 others include:

A data driven digital brokerage selling residential lots as quickly and as efficiently as possible across multiple jurisdictions and languages.

A residential construction digital marketplace with knowledge base, legal support and self service embedded financing options, e-contracts & e-payments from around the World. With fully integrated client facing project management suite of course.

Together they form a natural use case capable of unprecedented growth and fuel to innovation at an unprecedented time. Kicking off from our early adopter pool of 546 lot owners worth $346 MN USD ticking up at a rate of approx. $8.5 MN USD per month

Our pilot is live and ready to go and we are on countdown to officially opening the doors to our angel fund raise.

Now clearly I’m the not so young new kid on the block. I’m new to the Mexican tech scene and community.

I’m open to start conversations with community members. With interested entities beyond just the need for funds from like minded CEO’s, proptech, project development, real estate, e-commerce, fintech and construction experts.

In my next post a reveal what I believe to be the underlying problems holding back real estate here in the sector I know and love and how the 3 strings of the Otochio platform are perfectly positioned to address them.

Thanks for stopping by

Ibrahim

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