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\nHari Krishnan has taken over as CEO of PropertyGuru Group, and promises to bring Asia\u2019s leading property portal to the next level.
\nOver the course of his 16-year career, PropertyGuru Group CEO Hari Krishnan has worked in more than six different industries, but that\u2019s not because he\u2019s indecisive. Rather, it\u2019s because he has a constant desire to learn, and it\u2019s served him well thus far.
\nBy Cheryl Marie Tay\u00a0
\nPropertyGuru Group CEO Hari Krishnan has had an interesting career. At the beginning of 2016, he joined the company as President and Chief Business Officer, focusing on commercial operations.
\nBut he had not always been in the property industry. In fact, this was his first time stepping into the real estate market.
\nStill, within nine months of his employment at PropeprtyGuru, he had taken over as CEO from Steve Melhuish, co-founder of the property portal. Melhuish had served as CEO since its inception, and had now entrusted the operations of his creation to Krishnan.
\nA meandering journey
\nKrishnan\u2019s first job was as a product manager and custom support engineer at Cisco Systems during the era of the dot-com bubble; it signified the beginning of a career in technology.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve spent my entire career in technology. I enjoy being in tech. I\u2019ve had the privilege of working for a number of great companies that were in strong positions, like Cisco, but I\u2019ve also worked for a number of start-ups, such as a company called Travelguru \u2014 where I was Vice President of Product and Marketing \u2014 at the start of e-commerce in India.\u201d
\nIn 2009, he joined LinkedIn as their first employee in Asia, working as country manager for India for about three years before moving to Singapore in 2012 to take on the role of VP and Managing Director for Asia Pacific and Japan. That was his last job before he took the leap into the property industry.
\nMutually beneficial
\nBut wherever he goes, it seems both he and whichever company that hired him come away the better for it.
\nOne example is his previous appointment at Travelguru, an online travel start-up. He says: \u201cBeing at the birth of an e-commerce industry in a large market like India in 2005 was quite an experience. Driving online product and marketing strategies at that point was definitely a big achievement.\u201d
\nWhen it comes to his LinkedIn days, he says: \u201cI joined LinkedIn when it was smaller than PropertyGuru, when there were only 350 employees. It was a California start-up, with offices only in the US and the UK.
\n\u201cThen we opened up in India. By the time I left (LinkedIn), we had about 1,300 employees in the region, and we had actually grown revenue by a hundred times in my six years there.
\nCross-cultural experiences
\nHe also recalls the cultural aspect of his time at LinkedIn fondly.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t have many colleagues in Asia when I started, so I think to build that entire business and culture was a great experience. Today, when people talk about it as a great place to work, I feel very proud to have been a part of that.\u201d
\nIn fact, he has become quite adept at what he calls \u201cworking across cultures\u201d.
\n\u201cWhen I was at LinkedIn, I had operations in Australia, Japan and China, in addition to India and Southeast Asia. Working across cultures has been a great learning experience. At first, it was challenging, but now I\u2019m very confident, because I have managed to work across these cultures.
\n\u201cWhen you come from one culture and have to manage another, (you realise) the biggest challenges are people-oriented.\u201d
\nHis experiences with cultures apart from his own started before his career began, however. After earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Bombay (now the University of Mumbai) in 1999, he moved from India to the United States for his master\u2019s degree in Telecommunications at the University of Colorado.
\nHe then moved to Silicon Valley in 2000 to start his career at Cisco Systems. Following this, he lived briefly in Singapore while pursuing an MDA in General Management and Finance at INSEAD. It was here that he met PropertyGuru\u2019s co-founder Jani Rautiainen.
\nHe says jokingly: \u201cI had a bachelor\u2019s degree in engineering in India, a master\u2019s degree in telecommunications in the US, and like a good Indian, I got one more degree.\u201d
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\nKrishnan with PropertyGuru\u2019s founders Jani Rautiainen (left) and Steve Melhuish (middle).
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\nThe future of property
\nNow that he is CEO of Asia\u2019s leading online property group, one wonders what this means for the future of the property market in Asia. Reassuringly, Krishnan is confident.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve said that our mission is to help people make confident property decisions through relevant content, actionable insights and world-class service, and we have to deliver on that. My primary focus is to make sure we actually pursue that mission.\u201d
\nHe also knows that in order to achieve the aforementioned, the right people are of utmost importance. For this reason, his secondary focus is to \u201cmake sure we create the absolute best environment to attract the best talent, because in the digital industry, if you have the best people, you will have the best company: you will provide the best technology, the best sales, the best marketing\u2026everything.
\n\u201cSo my primary job is to create an environment where the best people thrive, and attract more top talent into our company.\u201d
\nThis is especially crucial, thanks to the lack of essential information available online.
\n\u201cProperty is a space where people need a lot of information to make a good decision. As someone who has bought property using information from PropertyGuru, I found it to be extremely useful. But I think within the next five years \u2014 in conjunction with our mission, actually \u2014 getting the right information to the right person at the right time is important, though it\u2019s very hard to do.\u201d
\nHe adds: \u201cThere will be a \u2018decade of digital\u2019 for Southeast Asian property. If you look at Southeast Asian property buyers, renters and investors, they are all online today. They are all using their devices (to find information).
\n\u201cBut the property sector is not as digital as it should be. I expect, over the next 10 years, there will be a rapid digitisation (of the market), and it\u2019s what I\u2019m calling the \u2018decade of digital\u2019. I believe that starting this year, we\u2019ll see it.
\n\u201cThis year, we\u2019ve already done drone videos and drone photography in Malaysia. Whether it\u2019s travel, financial services or media, consumers expect transparency, so why should they expect any different from property? And the way to achieve this is digitally. If you look at markets in the region that are still developing, whether it\u2019s India or China, their property markets are already digitising rapidly.\u201d
\nA team effort
\nKrishnan acknowledges that many people have positively influenced him over the years.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve had the privilege of working with two great CEOs: John Chambers at Cisco and Jeff Wiener at LinkedIn.
\n\u201cJohn taught me how you could inspire a large organisation and get them to do amazing things. Jeff taught me how you could pursue a mission and realise your goals by being very determined and systematic in how you pursue those goals.\u201d
\nLive and let learn
\nThroughout his career, the multiple changes he has made to different industries stems from a constant desire to learn new things and in the process, become more versatile.
\n\u201cI like to keep learning. I had a good career at LinkedIn; I did well and I really enjoyed working there. But what made me look for a change was that I wanted to continue to learn. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m unique in that perspective; I believe there are others who also want to keep learning.
\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t settle; I did very well there and could have easily stayed in that job or in that company. But I was looking for my next challenge, because I\u2019m always looking to learn.\u201d
\nHe believes that the skills he has picked up are even more important than the experiences he has had along the way.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve worked in technology, online music, online travel, online recruitment, social media, and now, online property. I\u2019ve been able to make these transitions because I am able to understand what skills are required in different industries.
\n\u201cI have a digital industry background, and I\u2019ve spent the last decade or so helping offline businesses \u2014 everything from music and entertainment to travel and recruitment and now, property \u2014 go online.\u201d
\nHe also confesses to most of the challenges he faces being \u201cself-inflicted\u201d. His professional experience in a variety of industries has consistently presented one main challenge: to understand each industry better.
\nIt all comes back to his love for being in the digital world, and his determination to do his very best, whichever industry he enters. \u201cUltimately, I\u2019m a digital native; I understand the digital industry very well and I\u2019m very confident in my knowledge about that.
\n\u201cBut I\u2019m new to property as an industry, and I think every time you go into a new industry, the challenge is to understand the jobs, the players, the norms and so on. Consumers will expect transparency and access to data from PropertyGuru, and we are definitely going to bring it.\u201d<\/p>\n