Empowering African Real Estate Investors with Data Analytics - A Conversation with Henry Asenso

[00:00:07] .

[00:00:13] Hey there everyone and welcome to the A conversation series on The Sound of Accra Podcast.

[00:00:18] I go by the name of Adrian Daniels.

[00:00:20] This is the conversation with series.

[00:00:22] This is a standalone series where we explore the lives journey and celebrate the success

[00:00:26] of individuals from a Ghanaian heritage or interest in short and sweet episodes.

[00:00:31] Today I'm joined by Henry Ascenso.

[00:00:33] He's the founder of Cure Africa.

[00:00:35] They are Ghana's first platform helping people invest wisely in real estate in

[00:00:40] Ghana with the power of data and analytics or analysis or analytics or is it both of them?

[00:00:47] Either one, both of them to be fair.

[00:00:50] Henry, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

[00:00:54] Yeah, doing well. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:56] Excellent. Excellent. Okay, cool.

[00:00:58] Tell us where you're speaking from and what have you been up to recently?

[00:01:03] Yes, I'm speaking from the UK currently just north of Cambridge.

[00:01:07] That's where I live.

[00:01:10] Basically kind of juggling the day job and Cure Africa has been what I've been up to recently and for the past three to four years.

[00:01:19] But we've really wrapped up Cure recently where we are now working with local developers to really build an intuitive platform.

[00:01:28] So we've just released that.

[00:01:30] So Cain to talk to you about how that adds value to people's journeys, both from a business to business and business to consumer perspective.

[00:01:40] Beautiful, beautiful.

[00:01:41] I'm really excited to learn more about Cure Africa.

[00:01:44] I believe there is a gap in the market when it does come to data capturing and databases in general in terms of different markets.

[00:01:53] So this is really exciting products when they come across it.

[00:01:57] And I think I first came across you on Tim Swain's channel, which was lovely because I know him and he knows me.

[00:02:03] We've interviewed each other.

[00:02:04] And I think it was quite interesting because I think shortly after that, you reached out to me, which is lovely.

[00:02:10] So it's good to hear that we're kind of all on the same page.

[00:02:14] And I think there is some synergy for sure.

[00:02:17] So yeah, Henry, let's go straight into it.

[00:02:20] Give us a quick elevator pitch about yourself.

[00:02:23] Less than 60 seconds. Just tell us a bit more about yourself.

[00:02:27] Yeah, so I'm a management consultant by career and took an interest in data analytics, maybe post Covid.

[00:02:38] And ultimately, what I was trying to do is really build a skill set that would future proof me moving forward in case another Covid happened kind of thing, both career wise, but also in transitioning to Ghana, because I've heard the call.

[00:02:53] I also kind of feel that intuitive need to be in Ghana.

[00:02:59] And I've been going back and forth like many people, similar story, British born Ghanaian every summer, every Christmas.

[00:03:06] And then as I grew into my adult years, I really wanted to have my foot some sort of stake in the ground in Ghana.

[00:03:13] And I tried to do that through real estate because I'd been involved in real estate in the UK.

[00:03:18] And one thing that I found was this kind of really disaggregated information landscape, no central place to make some kind of really informed decisions.

[00:03:29] I couldn't compare prices, couldn't compare prices over time.

[00:03:34] Everything in terms of information around the sector was very anecdotal.

[00:03:38] And so the timing was really perfect as I was learning my data analytics skills and experience in this problem.

[00:03:45] I started to kind of analyse information and the real estate sector specifically in Ghana.

[00:03:51] And that was helpful for me, so I knew it would be helpful for others.

[00:03:55] So built a proof of concept, tested that.

[00:03:59] And that was part of the YouTube collaborations that I did last year.

[00:04:02] Just kind of testing with anyone pay for this kind of information.

[00:04:05] Got them got the approval that people would.

[00:04:07] And then I went really, really kind of deep into actually working with developers to build a really intuitive mobile responsive platform that puts Ghana's business real estate sector in the palm of your hand.

[00:04:21] Brilliant. It is exciting to hear that you've gone out your way to develop something like this.

[00:04:27] I mean, there's a lot of problems that need to be solved in the real estate market in Ghana and land is one of them.

[00:04:33] That is a huge one as well.

[00:04:36] I think you're trying to solve it in the sense of, you know, pricing things right.

[00:04:41] So, I mean, I mean, I had a look at your platform and we will dive into a shared screen demo a bit later on in this conversation for those who are watching YouTube.

[00:04:52] Could you tell us in terms of the kind of stakeholders that you look into target?

[00:04:55] Because, of course, I'm not to the price points.

[00:04:57] You know, I think I think the start from around maybe thirty dollars a month from the subscription or something like that.

[00:05:03] I'm sure to make this a sustainable business, I'm sure you're aiming for a certain amount of MMR or maybe ARR or a certain amount of subscriptions every month.

[00:05:11] To tell us the kind of stuff, I'm sure you must that must mean you must work with a range of stakeholders in the real estate market.

[00:05:17] So tell us the kind of people that Cura is looking to target.

[00:05:21] Yeah. So, you know, good points around MMR, M RR and ARR.

[00:05:26] It's monthly recurring revenue. It's monthly recurring revenue for those who aren't aware.

[00:05:29] Yeah, exactly. So this is effectively a software as a service platform.

[00:05:33] So that's the business model that typically you would find.

[00:05:36] And in terms of the target audience, we've kind of had like four core segments and they would have various usages for the platform.

[00:05:44] There may be a returnee.

[00:05:46] So somebody who just wants to get an idea of a particular area or set of areas may sign up for a couple of months and then decide to opt out later down the line.

[00:05:55] Estate agents or people working directly in the market on a day to day basis is probably my core audience.

[00:06:03] And those are the people that have to look at the market from different angles on a continuous basis, and they don't have that information.

[00:06:10] So they are kind of my core developers, people who are looking to price potential builds or, you know, those kind of things.

[00:06:22] That's another core arena.

[00:06:25] And we have a feature coming in soon. In fact, it's already completed.

[00:06:28] I just need to deploy it where we've got a valuation tool which would help both real estate agents and developers.

[00:06:34] It combines both the population data and the real estate data to tell you yields affordability.

[00:06:41] What kind of profile of an individual would be able to afford this based on price income ratio.

[00:06:47] So if that price that you're intending to rent at is 30% or less, then that's extremely affordable of income.

[00:06:56] That's extremely affordable for this type of persona.

[00:07:00] So we've taken information on salaries, job types in Ghana, they're tied to population.

[00:07:08] So we could say in this district, in Achimota, which is this district, there are 1000 people that could afford this property and they work in this sector.

[00:07:18] So that's coming. So it's mainly kind of returnees, real estate professionals, developers and general investors in Ghana as well.

[00:07:30] Yeah, that's it. And it's not only real estate.

[00:07:32] What we try to do is overlay this additional information so that you can start to make business decisions.

[00:07:38] Where would I want to open a shop? Where would I want to grow my business?

[00:07:44] All of these information points come together to try and make a holistic choice or decision.

[00:07:49] Brilliant, brilliant. This is a powerful platform, Henry.

[00:07:54] I've also noticed that there's a lot of data points that go into as well. So you're sorting data from a lot of different places.

[00:08:02] I mean, you mentioned the people in the area, you mentioned the pricing, you mentioned the affordability.

[00:08:10] So that must be being able to understand what kind of person can afford in what area.

[00:08:17] So talk us more about the data points, like where you're sourcing the data.

[00:08:22] And because the data capture is quite tricky in Africa, are you teaming up with databases, with data partners or you're sourcing this yourself?

[00:08:30] How this is a way?

[00:08:31] Yeah, so a lot of this originally was done by myself.

[00:08:36] So the entrepreneur type thing.

[00:08:38] Wow.

[00:08:39] And it got to a point where actually to make it scale, I could only now involve like really good full stack developers.

[00:08:49] Now my entire team is from Ghana. They're based in Ghana.

[00:08:52] They live in Ghana. They're smart young people in Ghana.

[00:08:56] And they understood my requirements and were able to build a tech stack that enables me to scale now.

[00:09:03] So we have our own database, which we kind of pull on to build in the front end in terms of data points.

[00:09:11] So for real estate, we look at publicly available listings and just kind of refresh that data on a monthly basis to try and ascertain trends.

[00:09:23] From a population perspective, we've leveraged the census from 2021.

[00:09:29] And with salaries, we've done our own research and then aligned them to what we found in the census.

[00:09:36] And then we've been able to connect the population data to the census population data to the salary data and then made inferences based on real estate prices, etc.

[00:09:47] So you take industry standard measures like price to income ratio, which is what percentage of your income do you spend on rent as a measure of affordability?

[00:10:01] And with that idea, we could say, OK, given that and given the population and given the population that do this type of job and given the pay scales for that type of job, we can say exactly how many people would be able to afford this price point.

[00:10:17] Right. So that's a feature that's coming in soon.

[00:10:19] So there's that and then infrastructure, we've got schools, we've got attractions.

[00:10:24] Again, anything publicly available.

[00:10:26] I was rummaging through the internet to find big lists of schools and big attractions and those kind of things and pulling all those together and connecting them so that we could refresh them and see what the updates are.

[00:10:40] And then now I've built more of a team around me.

[00:10:43] We can actually go out and do our own research and say, OK, what's the latest hotspots?

[00:10:47] Go around East Loughorn and tell me all the newest places that have come up and their price points, those kind of things.

[00:10:53] So it's a variety of publicly available sources.

[00:10:57] But what we've tried to do at Kuro is amalgamate that into something that's really useful and really intuitive to a user to be able to say, OK, I can really make an informed decision now.

[00:11:10] Wow. This is powerful stuff once again.

[00:11:14] So I imagine that your Ghana team helps you to keep the data point updated, right?

[00:11:18] Because they're on the ground.

[00:11:19] Yeah, it's kind of automatic.

[00:11:21] So actually, I kind of do that piece.

[00:11:24] But what my Ghana team has been doing is building the front end, the dashboard end.

[00:11:32] So really talented software engineers have helped me do that.

[00:11:36] And then, yes, my business support team or virtual assistants, they do help me clean the data, make sure it's saying the right thing.

[00:11:46] Because on one side, you may have something that says, OK, this property is in O'yarafa.

[00:11:53] But when you dig deep, actually, it's in Pantai.

[00:11:56] So all of that nuance is what makes Kuro quite special because we actually get to the detail of what it is underneath the surface.

[00:12:06] So, yeah, that's what my team are helping me with.

[00:12:09] And they've been amazing.

[00:12:10] It's been an amazing experience running a fully remote team and delivering well.

[00:12:15] You know, I'm a full firm believer in remote teams being able to deliver high quality work of well.

[00:12:21] And I encourage my team, you know, we don't need to jump in an office.

[00:12:26] Not necessary, not for our product anyway.

[00:12:28] So, yeah, it's been good.

[00:12:29] It's been a big good journey in learning that side.

[00:12:33] Brilliant. And that's the beauty of building a product, a digital product is usually you can do it remotely, which is fantastic.

[00:12:40] Hemi, Hemi, I just want to double tap on your team.

[00:12:42] So, I mean, you keep praising your team, which is, of course, a recurring theme.

[00:12:46] I'll come back to Kuro because I want us to dive into a short demo to tell us about your team.

[00:12:51] So, I mean, how big is this team?

[00:12:53] Also, I appreciate that, you know, having the team isn't necessarily free.

[00:12:58] So is this bootstrapped?

[00:12:59] Are you looking to get investors?

[00:13:00] Do you have any investment going into it?

[00:13:02] Talk us through it.

[00:13:03] Yeah, you know, it's funny because as a startup, when you start, it's like it's almost like the goal is to get funding.

[00:13:11] Like just the industry wide goal, the celebration is this person has got series A, X amount, et cetera.

[00:13:19] And as I was building this and learning and reading more and more, I came to the conclusion that actually my niche, my vertical SaaS arena,

[00:13:30] I'm not horizontal, so I'm not a male chimp that tries to get everybody.

[00:13:35] I have a very specific target market.

[00:13:38] And with that, you know, I can bootstrap this.

[00:13:41] I have bootstrapped this up until this point.

[00:13:43] This has been my savings.

[00:13:44] Wonderful.

[00:13:44] But I've actually invested it.

[00:13:46] So it's my hard earned money that's paying these people in Ghana to help me build this.

[00:13:52] So, yeah, and I intend to continue that way because I like the degree of control that I have in that regard.

[00:13:59] And also, it gives me an option to reward my employees better if I have more ownership.

[00:14:04] So that's yeah, I'm bootstrapped.

[00:14:08] I don't intend to change that unless when we attempt to scale, which we're in the background working on and scale, I mean, country by country.

[00:14:17] If that needs a push through investment, yeah, maybe, but it's got to be the right investor.

[00:14:22] I've been approached in some other kind of like accelerators and those kind of things.

[00:14:27] But actually, it's not just the funding.

[00:14:30] Eventually, the funding is the second part.

[00:14:32] I'm not really worried about that.

[00:14:33] It's more do you give me access to a network of people I can learn from?

[00:14:37] That's the most important thing for me.

[00:14:39] So, yeah, that went bootstrapped and continue to be bootstrapped until further notice.

[00:14:45] Fantastic. And that's that's all music to my ears.

[00:14:47] I mean, I did have a similar conversation with Samuel from remote telly or remotely, sorry.

[00:14:52] And yeah, he was he was in a similar he was in a similar position before he raised call of a million from Jeremy from Pong, the buying Leverkusen player in Germany.

[00:15:00] And he was saying that, you know, he's all bootstrapped and they've done really well to get to I think they got to maybe six, seven figures before raising, which is fantastic, you know, annually.

[00:15:11] And yeah, it just shows that you don't necessarily need to raise money in order to be successful.

[00:15:16] It's only if it needs it.

[00:15:17] So I think raising money should only be used, I think, necessarily if you need to scale.

[00:15:22] But I think in order to get your proof of concept in order to ensure that, you know, that you can generate revenue from your business, you should be you should be bootstrapping.

[00:15:31] Otherwise, if you're going to go straight to invest the money, you put more pressure on yourself essentially.

[00:15:36] Yeah. And investors are looking for big, big paybacks.

[00:15:39] They're looking for the billion dollar companies.

[00:15:41] If you're looking at venture capital, they're looking for the next Ubers or the next pay solution that dominates the entire continent.

[00:15:49] So I completely agree with that.

[00:15:51] And I think fundamentally, I want to build a sustainable business first before looking for investment.

[00:15:57] I want to be a profitable business first before looking investment.

[00:16:01] Even at that point, I don't even know if I need investment.

[00:16:03] What I need is access to a network of similar people, similar like minded people that encounter challenges.

[00:16:08] And we can share kind of our experiences and help each other out and give us some enablers and accelerators.

[00:16:15] You know, the funding would be great.

[00:16:17] Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't say no to it, but it'd have to be really well thought out and at the right time.

[00:16:23] You know?

[00:16:24] Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:16:26] OK. We talked about having a remote team and you talked about you working remotely yourself.

[00:16:31] You're working full time and, you know, the irate thing is that you have a team.

[00:16:35] Are they working full time for you or maybe part time and full time combination?

[00:16:39] Um, I mean, you know, the thing with me is they're effectively independent contractors to my organisation.

[00:16:48] They work whenever they need to.

[00:16:50] I have a list of tasks that I give them and say I need this done.

[00:16:53] Is there anything you need from me to get it done?

[00:16:55] Yes or no?

[00:16:56] OK, we'll speak in a week.

[00:16:57] And in a week's time, that stuff is done.

[00:16:59] So whether they work full time, part time is not my interest.

[00:17:02] I will tell them, look, this is the rate I can pay you per month.

[00:17:06] We start at the beginning of the month.

[00:17:08] I give you a set of requirements.

[00:17:10] You deliver against those.

[00:17:12] Send me a Slack message if you need any further information.

[00:17:14] And we've worked fantastically like that.

[00:17:17] But for my my software development team and also my business support team, it's kind of like, all right, we've got a weekly stand up.

[00:17:24] And it's like, OK, guys, this is what I need to have done.

[00:17:27] This is what I'm thinking.

[00:17:28] Any challenge?

[00:17:29] We're open to it.

[00:17:30] And then I'll get a message from here and here and now.

[00:17:33] And we just on Slack, fish bash, boss.

[00:17:35] Everything gets done.

[00:17:36] It's been an amazing experience because, as I said, I'm a firm believer in working remotely.

[00:17:41] And I know you can drive really efficient results and actually keep motivated team members if you allow them flexibility.

[00:17:48] So if my developers are working on other projects, I don't care.

[00:17:52] It's not my business.

[00:17:52] Just as long as my stuff is done, I don't have any issue.

[00:17:55] And my stuff is always done.

[00:17:56] So, you know, go get your money wherever you can get it.

[00:17:59] I understand Ghana's tough.

[00:18:01] So go and get it wherever you can get it.

[00:18:03] You know, but work, work, do the work for me.

[00:18:06] And there's no issue.

[00:18:07] I've never had an issue, especially with any of my team members.

[00:18:11] They understand the task if they don't, they ask the questions.

[00:18:13] We resolve it quickly off the way they go and they bring results.

[00:18:17] Fantastic. So a combination of freelancers and full timers.

[00:18:21] Henry, could you go into how you got your staff?

[00:18:23] I mean, I think it's quite an interesting conversation, I think, for the audience to kind of understand, because I know getting employees, any form of

[00:18:30] employee or working in Ghana is not easy.

[00:18:32] So how was it sourcing talent for building your software platform?

[00:18:37] For me, for me, it was actually very easy and yeah, very, very easy.

[00:18:42] And it's not a usual story.

[00:18:44] I'm very aware of it.

[00:18:45] But ultimately what I did was I got to a point, it was kind of like a make or break point where I built this idea by myself and a proof of concept by myself with the resources available to me.

[00:19:00] But I knew it needed either I thought it needed substantial investment to get it to where it needed to be.

[00:19:06] But it didn't. What it needed is the right skill set.

[00:19:09] And I said to myself, well, I'd rather get that skill set from Ghana.

[00:19:14] If I'm going to pay anyone, I'd rather pay somebody in Ghana, a Ghanaian who would like the money.

[00:19:21] So I thought to myself, OK, where can I source talent?

[00:19:25] So I started reaching out to a couple of university professors and I said, look, I need this.

[00:19:34] Well, I think I need this because I didn't even really know what I needed.

[00:19:37] But I was pretty sure what technologies the person needed to be proficient in, because I'd analyzed the competition, which was very little of actually, to be fair.

[00:19:46] And also I'd analyzed reference organizations that had done similar things.

[00:19:50] And I was like, OK, they're they're using this language to code, et cetera.

[00:19:54] So I was like, OK, I need a developer who can help me do databases, code a front end and understands kind of how to collect data from a database and represent in the front end.

[00:20:07] And so I reached out to a few university lecturers.

[00:20:12] And when I was in Ghana in July last year, was it July?

[00:20:16] Yeah, yeah, July last year.

[00:20:18] And I'd done some of those interviews with the YouTubers.

[00:20:22] I also met with a couple of university professors and said, look, this is what this is what I'm trying to do.

[00:20:28] They all saw the value in it.

[00:20:29] I need people who I can work with.

[00:20:31] And one professor in particular was Magic.

[00:20:34] He was like, OK, let me reach out to my network.

[00:20:37] And then the first people he came back with are the people I'm working with today.

[00:20:41] Wow. So going to some universities, going to maybe a certain university helped you to kind of tap into talent.

[00:20:48] Well, it's interesting again.

[00:20:50] Samuel from remotely, I think he has this conveyor belt of talent with a Chess university, I think, which is quite a tech.

[00:20:58] That's when I approached.

[00:21:00] Yeah, perfect.

[00:21:01] Perfect. So, I mean, just shows you that if you go to maybe somewhere that already has that profile of, you know, person that you're looking for, it can probably work for you straight away rather than happen to go into the public market to find someone.

[00:21:18] Yeah. And what I'd add to that is, you know, the younger generation know how to operate in a global world.

[00:21:26] They are an Internet generation.

[00:21:28] So they understand, especially if they're in the tech space, they understand the requirements that are what's required of you at a global level to compete.

[00:21:40] So therefore, they upskill themselves to compete at the same level.

[00:21:44] But not only that, they have the baseline African ingenuity that makes them ask the right questions, wants to be problem solvers.

[00:21:52] So my developers, for example, they revealed to me, Henry, you know, we've never coded in this particular language before, but we know roughly the syntax.

[00:22:01] So therefore, we just went and researched and we got it done.

[00:22:05] And I can't say that I would have got that getting it from anywhere else but Africa, because Africans do that thing of I need to figure out how to make it work.

[00:22:15] And it's inherent in a lot of us.

[00:22:16] And that's what I think separated that this talent.

[00:22:20] And, you know, I tend to grow teams and, you know, businesses using African talent because it's a special form of talent.

[00:22:29] I've seen that already.

[00:22:31] Beautiful, beautiful.

[00:22:32] And we'll probably have a link to some of some previous conversations we've had with African talent companies who, you know, outsource African talent across the world.

[00:22:42] Henry, this has been a fantastic conversation.

[00:22:44] Let's let's let's take a look at Cura.

[00:22:46] So let's show your screen.

[00:22:48] Let's go into it for a few minutes.

[00:22:49] Let's go into it.

[00:22:50] Absolutely.

[00:22:51] Let me just share my screen.

[00:22:53] I'll just be looking to my right.

[00:22:55] That's my second screen.

[00:22:56] So, okay, you can see my screen.

[00:22:59] So this is the homepage.

[00:23:01] I'll just log in with me.

[00:23:06] Brilliant.

[00:23:07] Like this, like the login screen clean.

[00:23:11] Yeah.

[00:23:15] Yeah.

[00:23:16] A lot of this front end was built by myself.

[00:23:19] It's the technical.

[00:23:19] Yeah.

[00:23:21] So ultimately when you log into Cura, this is the first time that I've seen this.

[00:23:26] So ultimately, when you log into Cura, this is the screen you see.

[00:23:29] So it's kind of where you manage your account and follow some user guides.

[00:23:33] And then Cura is built on like three core pillars.

[00:23:37] So it's the data lab, which is the kind of flagship area for Cura.

[00:23:43] The ability to upload a listing into Cura so you can load a listing into Cura so that our audience can see it on the front end.

[00:23:51] So essentially, we will have actually very shortly just an area where you can just review listings and that's publicly available to everyone to see.

[00:23:59] And then insights and resources and insights and resources are kind of like a collection of articles based on certain topics.

[00:24:07] So relocating, investing, business, construction, real estate and resources.

[00:24:13] So like top five real estate agents, seven affordable lawyers, those kind of articles are in here and grouped accordingly.

[00:24:21] So, yeah, that's the core.

[00:24:25] Yeah, that's the core basis. We also have an event section.

[00:24:28] So the events section, basically what we do is we aggregate publicly available listed events concerning Ghana and Africa into our platform so that you can say, all right, I'm in the US on April 29th.

[00:24:40] There's this event happening because a firm belief for us, for Cura, is doing business or relocating any of those things.

[00:24:48] Your network is a key point.

[00:24:50] So your ability to go out and do these different events is really crucial.

[00:24:53] I use it myself to see what's coming up in terms of things I need to go to.

[00:24:58] Yeah, so that's that's another point for it.

[00:25:00] And then you've got your latest content.

[00:25:02] You can ask any questions.

[00:25:03] But let me dive into the data lab because that's that's what everybody comes here for.

[00:25:09] So it's just loading up.

[00:25:11] OK. So the data lab ultimately is broken down into a couple of sections.

[00:25:19] You have your search panel here so you can search by region, district and or town.

[00:25:28] You have price filters, minimum, maximum, bedroom filters, minimum, maximum.

[00:25:33] You can select a property type.

[00:25:35] And then this is a new feature that's just come in.

[00:25:37] So it's exclusive to the sound of a Cura.

[00:25:39] We have a freehold, a free text feature where you can just type in any word and it will filter according to that word.

[00:25:48] So ultimately, that's the kind of how you search Kuro.

[00:25:51] And then the main sections of it are real estate, which is broken down into for rent, for sale and land infrastructure, trends and demographics, infrastructure.

[00:26:01] I'll just hop over there quickly now.

[00:26:03] Breaks down into schools, attractions, construction and health facilities.

[00:26:08] Trends looks at trends in prices over time for rent, for sale and land.

[00:26:16] And as you change your filters, this trend line changes and then demographics looks at what's the population of a particular area.

[00:26:26] The spread of male female over different age groups, education levels by percentage, male female school attendance.

[00:26:36] And also gives you an idea as to what type of work are people doing in these areas?

[00:26:41] Are they employed or outside the labor force?

[00:26:45] What sector are they mostly private informers, you'd understand with Ghana.

[00:26:49] And then if they're unemployed, what's the reasoning for it and a breakdown of unemployment by region?

[00:26:54] So those are the core sections with the real estate section.

[00:27:01] To break this down, we've got a results overview.

[00:27:05] So this is everything in in greater Accra.

[00:27:09] But I could say, OK, show me everything in Achimota.

[00:27:12] Right. And as soon as I select Achimota, the model loads,

[00:27:17] pre-populates the district and says, OK, this number of listings minimum price is this for rent, maximum price is this average time on market is unique to Kuro.

[00:27:27] So what we do in our database, we calculate how many times

[00:27:32] exact data repeats over a period of time so that you can see real time on market.

[00:27:39] Because what you get with a lot of platforms is that they refresh their listings.

[00:27:43] So it might have been on there for three years, but all of a sudden it's shown it's been on there for two weeks.

[00:27:48] So this gives you real time on market, which enables you to be better informed in terms of negotiation.

[00:27:55] Median price, which is more of an illustrative price of the area,

[00:28:01] because averages can be pulled out by a wild priced properties on the other side.

[00:28:07] And so we've got a breakdown of property types.

[00:28:11] So apartment house duplex and this map feature is really cool.

[00:28:15] So let me just take this off for a second.

[00:28:18] The map feature almost enables you to just load it.

[00:28:23] Yeah, so I've just gone across my metropolitan, right?

[00:28:25] You can go into this map and you can look over Ghana and see averages prices by a town.

[00:28:32] Wonderful. Wonderful.

[00:28:33] Wow, that's super helpful for those that want to relocate or buy properties.

[00:28:38] Exactly. Exactly.

[00:28:40] And exactly.

[00:28:42] So then the other fit here is a breakdown of the property data of those 600 or however many listings says 7800 for Chrome.

[00:28:51] Listings. Yeah, there's a lot of listings.

[00:28:54] How what's what are those listings?

[00:28:56] It's a literal breakdown of what they are.

[00:28:58] And then we have this section called featured property.

[00:29:01] So this is where partners of Kuro.

[00:29:04] So we have vetted real estate partners can upload.

[00:29:07] Remember that upload a listing option that was there?

[00:29:10] It comes into the database.

[00:29:11] And when somebody sees this, they can say, OK, this is the town, the district, greater crowd.

[00:29:17] This is the details of the property.

[00:29:18] But then there's a market position to tell you, OK, this property price is X percent or cities below the market rate.

[00:29:26] Average price, but it's 12 percent above the median price, for example.

[00:29:31] So when you're looking at things now, it's like, OK, actually, this is high price or this is low price.

[00:29:36] You can get a certain context.

[00:29:39] So the other thing in the real estate section is our price overview section.

[00:29:49] Yeah, perfect.

[00:29:50] So what this does is shows you the most reoccurring price points.

[00:29:55] We call them price bins.

[00:29:57] So the most reoccurring price point for rent in Accra,

[00:30:00] because I think a lot of the notion or the sentiment in Ghana real estate is that it's super expensive.

[00:30:06] It is relative to what people are earning.

[00:30:09] You got to think about it.

[00:30:10] The median salary in Ghana is like a thousand four hundred or five hundred cities a month.

[00:30:17] And you've got dollar price properties come into market, etc.

[00:30:20] But people have to live somewhere.

[00:30:21] So what actually this tells you is that actually the most occurring price point

[00:30:25] in Accra metropolitan area is actually between two and three thousand cities a month.

[00:30:30] Represents eight percent of the market and six hundred eighty eight listings.

[00:30:34] Right. And the next bin is three thousand to four thousand.

[00:30:37] The next bin is four thousand to five.

[00:30:41] Then the next bin is seven thousand to eight thousand.

[00:30:44] So you can see that actually it's not just like sequentially increasing

[00:30:49] in terms of number of listings and price, some price point changes.

[00:30:53] So it gives you an idea.

[00:30:55] And it's helped a few of my clients when pricing, when somebody says I want a million

[00:31:00] dollars for something, they can say, well, you would be in the top no point, no three

[00:31:03] percent of the market. That's how they're using it.

[00:31:06] Fantastic. Yeah.

[00:31:08] The other thing we have is town data.

[00:31:10] So that's just basically telling us average price, median price by town along with

[00:31:14] listings. So, yeah, that's basically the real estate section.

[00:31:19] Yeah. On infrastructure.

[00:31:22] Yeah, I just look into one town in particular.

[00:31:24] OK, so I wish you through that.

[00:31:27] So basically this was OK.

[00:31:29] Norfolk on these are the schools to main universities.

[00:31:32] You've got a highlight university that comes up and then a breakdown of what they

[00:31:36] are saying information happens for attractions,

[00:31:40] construction and health facilities.

[00:31:44] And then trends is more aligned to the information you have in the real estate

[00:31:48] section. So we've said Norfolk gone, but we could say, all right,

[00:31:53] minimum of five thousand, maximum of ten thousand.

[00:31:59] And one to two bedrooms and this this will then dynamically change the

[00:32:06] the the view and you can just look at different time periods,

[00:32:10] year, three months, etc.

[00:32:12] One last thing I'll just say about that is because we've already gone

[00:32:16] through the population demographic stuff is we have a currency converter built

[00:32:20] into Kuro. So you can view prices as euros,

[00:32:23] pounds or US dollars.

[00:32:25] So if I was to just apply that.

[00:32:30] It's a bit buggy, but oh, here we go.

[00:32:33] That's that's. Yeah, I'm sure the audience gets the gist.

[00:32:37] I'm sure we get the gist of that. Yeah.

[00:32:39] Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, you can you can automatically switch.

[00:32:42] So now it's in euros.

[00:32:44] For a crime metropolitan, this is the minimum price, maximum price, etc.

[00:32:48] So that's what a port residential.

[00:32:50] So yeah, that's it. That's it. That's Kuro in a nutshell.

[00:32:53] Brilliant. No, I mean, it looks the platform looks clean.

[00:32:55] I like the design in the interface looks, you know, quite front user friendly.

[00:32:59] And there's a lot of data points in there and there's a lot that,

[00:33:03] you know, we're with estate stakeholders, whether it's someone buying,

[00:33:06] whether it's a real estate agent or developer

[00:33:09] or maybe an architect can find benefit from.

[00:33:12] So you've done a fantastic job.

[00:33:14] And, you know, I'm sure I'm sure there's a reason why you've held up

[00:33:17] this interview for a little bit while.

[00:33:18] So it makes it makes a lot of sense.

[00:33:21] So, yeah, let's let's close out with any final thoughts

[00:33:24] and where people can connect to you, Henry.

[00:33:26] Yeah. So, you know, please go to Kuroafrica.com

[00:33:30] if you are interested in the data, you know, you can sign up.

[00:33:33] But we also have an option where you just sign up to our newsletter,

[00:33:36] which is no cost whatsoever just to keep informed or abreast.

[00:33:40] You can reach me on email directly at Henry at Kuroafrica.com.

[00:33:45] Yeah, I'm happy to talk to people, collaborate, etc.

[00:33:48] I think this is a space where collaboration is needed.

[00:33:51] And yeah, you know, looking forward to kind of doing more

[00:33:55] of these kind of things.

[00:33:57] Brilliant. Awesome. Well, this has been great, Henry.

[00:34:00] And where can everyone find you?

[00:34:04] Yeah, mainly Instagram, Kuroafrica

[00:34:07] or OneWord, email and then just on the website.

[00:34:12] If you want to just drop me an email,

[00:34:14] that's probably the best way to reach me directly.

[00:34:16] Brilliant. Well, we'll leave the links to that in the description,

[00:34:19] whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on a podcast player

[00:34:22] to Henry's website, to his Instagram and his email.

[00:34:27] And yeah, I hope you guys really enjoy this conversation

[00:34:30] and look forward to seeing you in the next one.

[00:34:32] Thank you so much, guys. Thank you.

[00:34:36] Thank you.