Technology’s transformational role in revolutionising the Middle East real estate marketplace has manifested one of the UAE’s greatest business success stories, with cloud computing and GenAI innovation supercharging a new era of digital real estate services across the region.
Property Finder, the Middle East’s leading real estate marketplace that serves millions of users every month in a booming US$388 billion market, first embraced cloud computing when it transitioned to Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2012 to manage massive data volumes and high traffic that comes with being the number one online property platform in the region.
The implementation of serverless architecture has strengthened Property Finder’s market leadership, with the company now representing 65 percent online real estate advertising presence, leveraging AWS’s scalable and secure cloud infrastructure, and solidifying its position as a leading force in the evolving regional online real estate landscape.
More recently, Property Finder made a decisive move to migrate to AWS Redshift data warehouse service, and AWS QuickSight machine learning business intelligence service, a decision that has improved business performance by 81 percent, and reduced costs by 40 percent.
The business also recently migrated its data lakehouse to AWS to unify analytics infrastructure and streamline data integration. As most of Property Finder’s data sources already reside within the AWS ecosystem, this move enabled seamless connectivity, reduced latency, and simplified data ingestion pipelines.
In addition, the property portal integrates with AWS’s AI and machine learning services, like Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Q, and Amazon Bedrock, helping the business accelerate its development of intelligent features across its platform.
This successful migration highlights the powerful benefits of AWS, and its cutting-edge GenAI services to enhance business processes. These improvements span from AI-powered recommendations and intelligent chatbots, to advanced video processing, automated listing quality checks, and fraud detection.
These customised tech advancements were embedded in response to key challenges faced by Property Finder customers, of which nearly half (44 percent) regard ‘trust’ as the primary criterion when seeking their next property rental or purchase. Automated listing quality checks and fraud detection are examples of GenAI applications built on the AWS AI/ML ecosystem, including Bedrock and other services.
“Property Finder’s transformation showcases how technology is revolutionising Middle East real estate,” said Himanshu Niranjani, CTO of Property Finder. “At its core, a strategic migration to AWS Redshift created more than just a modern data foundation – it became the springboard for AI innovation.
“By leveraging Amazon Bedrock’s diverse LLM capabilities and tight integration with their data warehouse, Property Finder rapidly deployed sophisticated GenAI solutions across our platform. This seamless connection between data and AI transformed everything from listing creation to ensuring listing quality, and detecting unavailable listings and processing millions of requests every month.”
Building a ‘property cloud’ vision, a nexus of the best tech talent
Founded in 2007, Property Finder’s tech-fuelled rise mirrors the Middle East’s own digital transformation in recent years, with AWS and other tech leaders helping accelerate innovation in the region’s emerging AI economy.
“Today, Property Finder stands as the region’s pioneer in AI-powered real estate, where every interaction is enhanced by intelligent automation and delivered at lightning speed through AWS’s global infrastructure,” said Tanuja Randery, Vice President, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, AWS. “This integration of robust data architecture and advanced AI capabilities isn’t just transforming their business; it’s the manifestation of a ‘property cloud’ vision that is setting new industry standards.”
The AWS and Property Finder relationship also sets a blueprint for other organisations in the region looking to leverage cloud and AI technologies, while setting new standards for digital customer services across the Middle East and solidifying the region’s status as a nexus attracting the best tech talent.
“Property Finder has seen a significant surge in tech hires over the last year and we continue to attract top talent,” added Niranjani. “Our team is made up of the best and brightest, united by a shared ambition to change living for good in the region. We attract top talent who want to make an impact, and we firmly believe that when our people grow, we all succeed.”
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