Every company is leveraging talented Indian software engineers: Greg Hart, Compass, Inc.

Greg Hart, chief product officer of Compass Inc., which is a multibillion-dollar real estate technology platform based out of the US recently spoke to Dataquest. Greg Hart is a technology leader with over two decades of experience in the field of technology and product development. Prior to joining Compass, he worked with Amazon for almost 23 years. During his stint at amazon, Greg worked across multiple departments ranging from product development, product and general management, marketing, content and e-commerce.

Recently, Compass under the leadership of Robert Reffkin and technologists such as Greg Hart and Joseph Sirosh, established its first and only overseas development centre in India. The Hyderabad-based Compass IDC is helping to accelerate the company's software development for its real estate agents by complementing existing hubs in New York City, Seattle and Washington, DC. Read on to know more about how Compass aims at tapping into local talent in India.

DQ: What is your view on India as a technology and R&D hub? And are there enough skilled youth in India?

Greg Hart: Absolutely, to the second part of the question, but my view is that if you look at the history of the technology industry, every company is leveraging talented Indian software engineers, product managers, product developers and designers to further their aims. And Indian engineers have played a major role in revolutionizing almost every single industry in the world, and real estate is going to be no different. And every company in the world, every leading company, from a tech perspective, is growing their presence in India. India is home to fantastic technology, talent, and really powered by entrepreneurial thinking and innovation that's critical for transforming industries. As a leading real estate tech company in the US, we need to make sure that we continue to grow our presence here in India and continue to invest in this talented workforce, which is what we've been doing and what we will continue to do.

DQ: Real estate is often viewed as a technology resistant vertical with the legacy systems. So, what significance do modern technologies like AI and ML hold in this field?

Greg Hart: Great question. Data really lies at the heart of real estate, and it's a massive advantage in many industries, real estate's no different. And companies like Compass are really some of the few entities that sit at the center of these data sources. You've got Agent data, client data, listing data and transaction data, and being able to leverage that is immensely powerful. And if you think about the real estate industry, in the United States, it's a vast industry. There are more than 2 million agents in the US alone. It’s a $2 trillion industry in the US.

And it really has not yet been transformed by technology. But those agents power 90% of the real estate transactions in the US. And so that's why our vision of the future of real estate is to transform the industry by building a tech enabled platform for agents to do a better job of serving their customers. And we do that by providing them with powerful tools. And by leveraging AI as a means to do that. We already do that today, through things like our “likely to sell” feature, and we'll continue to expand on that as we continue to grow the business. 

DQ: What are some of the challenges that you foresee in the Indian market?

Greg Hart: Well, I don't know whether they're necessarily challenges, I think of every challenge as an opportunity. And, for us, one of the things that's different, potentially, about Compass, relative to other companies that have, development centers here, is that Compass doesn't have a brand presence in India, aside from as an employer whereas other leading technology companies operate in India as well, and Compass doesn't yet. Overtime, of course, we'd love to change that. But right now, we're leveraging all the talent in India to help build out our business in the US, and look forward to, at some point, expanding internationally. For us, one of the challenges is to make sure that we're doing a good job of educating engineers, product developers and designers on Compass. 

We're the number one real estate brokerage in the US, we've achieved that in only nine years, which is incredibly impressive, and a really fast ramp. We did $6.4 billion dollars in revenue last year in 2021. It is a large business and despite its size, and despite the success we've achieved to date, really, in the very early stages of our growth as a company. It is a fantastic place for people to join to grow their careers.

DQ: What are you doing to make it more attractive to potential employees? Are you holding some campaigns? Or how are you reaching out to the Indian workforce? And how do you plan to take this ahead?

Greg Hart: Yeah, there are a variety of different things that we do to educate people on the opportunity here at Compass, one, first of all, just to help educate them on the company culture, because it's one that's really all about growth. We have our entrepreneurship principles that guide the company. And I think those principles really resonate with a lot of people in technology generally, and particularly people at the earlier stages of their career. And so, across our leadership principles, we've got dream big, move fast, be solutions driven, all of those things really appeal to folks in technology, because technology is inherently a growth industry and the people who work in it want to grow their careers. And so I think that's one of the things that we do, educate people about our entrepreneurship principles that really guide the company's approach. There are eight of them that we regularly talk with candidates about. We also certainly do branding exercises and talking with the media is part of that, to help tell the story of Compass. And the story of Compass is one that I think resonates with a lot of people, it was co-founded by Robert Rifkin, whose mother was a real estate agent, and raised him as a single mother. And he saw all the challenges that she faced in the way that she was trying to run her business because she didn't have technology and tools that could help her do that effectively. And, his view is that by applying technology to real estate, people in real estate, real estate agents could get the same benefits that many other industries have seen through the application of technology. And so telling that story is a big part of what we try and do when we engage with candidates and our recruiting.

DQ: Do you also plan to start offering services in India? And if so, then how different is the Indian real estate market to the market that we've seen us?

Greg Hart: Well, I certainly can't profess to be an expert on the Indian real estate market. But I think it is very different than the US market. The US market operates in a way that is relatively unique actually to many other markets, in real estate around the world. So, we do intend over time to expand internationally, I can't put any specific timetable on when that might happen, or when India might be one of the countries that we'd look at. But it's certainly something that we think is relevant, we believe that the technology platform that we've created for agents in the US is broadly relevant for real estate in any country. Because the activity of helping people buy and sell homes and providing tools that make it easier for agents to help clients do that is one that is broadly applicable everywhere. 

Do you also have any tie-ups with educational institutes to get the talent fresh out of college? Or do you only look at experienced talent, while hiring? 

We do have a set of folks that have joined us straight out of college here in India. And I imagine that we'll continue to pursue programs like that. I'm a big believer in having a mix of people, consisting of both people who are fresh out of college, and at the very earliest stages of their career, and people who are more experienced, because you get a great balance of energy and enthusiasm and experience that helps the entire company accelerate. And so that's something that I've done in my past and my time at Amazon, both in India and elsewhere. And it's something that I expect Compass will do as well. 

DQ: Does Compass have any initiatives in place to attract the millennial talent? And does the work culture support holding on to the millennial workforce and making work life balance that much better for them?

Greg Hart: Well, I think actually, most of our workforce is in the millennial generation. As a company Compass itself is nearly nine or nine and a half years old. The company itself is millennial and when you think about startups, they often are hiring people who are in their 20s and early 30s. And, that was certainly the case at Compass, the majority of our employees are in that generation. And so will absolutely continue to do that. And we're always looking at, how we make sure that we have a good work life balance, how we make sure that, particularly, as we work through the last few years in the pandemic, how we gave people the flexibility that they needed to be able to do that successfully.

DQ: What is your vision for the India Development Center and for the journey ahead?

Greg Hart: We originally opened the Compass India Development Center to accelerate the development of compasses software tools for our real estate agents. And since then, we've seen incredible growth in a very short period of time, as I mentioned, in nine years, we became the number one residential real estate company in the US. And a large part of that was driven by our investment in technology and research and development. Our hiring of our R&D staff, our engineering, product development and design staff in India was critical to us becoming the number one brokerage in the US. And it is the thing that differentiates us from other brokerages, and it will remain a key part of maintaining the growth that we've seen and the success that we've seen.

For the compass India Development Center, our focus is on building mobile applications on cloud-based applications, data intelligence, data analytics. And leveraging those in an integrated way to provide phenomenal tools to our real estate agents. And all of those things contribute to improving the efficiency and productivity of Compass’s real estate agents and enhancing the experience that both those agents have, and their clients have. And we are expanding our presence in India. Compass has invested not only in the creation of our office here in Hyderabad, but also in the creation of two new technology hubs in Gurugram & Bangalore. We’ll continue to ramp both our hiring here in Hyderabad as well as in Gurugram and Bengaluru. And the team is working and continues to work on really key parts of the Compass platform. And I think that makes it a really appealing place for engineers to come join. Because there's so much growth that's happening here. And growth is one of the things that I think is a defining characteristic of a great experience for any employee is to be able to join a company at a high growth stage and benefit from that growth from a learning and career perspective. 

DQ: When employees are hired from India, do you have like a specific training program to help them adapt to the requirements of the company? And how do you go about it, aligning the employees and workforce in India with the requirements that are very US market based in nature? 

Greg Hart: Since the folks here in India are working on tools and services for agents in the US, we do a lot of things to help our employees here, get up to speed both in the industry generally, in the US, and also on our platform, specifically, and our approach and our thinking. And so as part of onboarding, there are a number of things that are more specific to the US real estate industry that we make sure people are able to get exposed to so, primers on how the industry works, how we approach it, Compass’ history, on the platform that we provide, and the different components of the platform, the architecture of that platform, some of our practices that we use, as we develop products, the mechanics, basically, of how we develop, all of those things are part of our onboarding process to help people get up to speed. And then we regularly facilitate sessions where our employees here in India can benefit from our agents in the US both indirectly through consuming research that we've done with agents to get their viewpoint on things as well as directly by facilitating conversations with our customers with our agents in the US.

DQ: How is the experience different with a conglomerate like Amazon and a growing company like Compass?

Greg Hart: Well, I was fortunate to join Amazon when it was a startup. I joined Amazon in 1997. So, prior to going public, there were only a few 100 people at the company when I joined. And so, I was able to experience the startup stage of Amazon. Now, obviously, Amazon is a massive global company, and one of the largest and most impactful and valuable companies in the world. But I was able to see that journey firsthand while I was at Amazon, so I was very fortunate in that respect. And the reason that I decided to join Compass was because I wanted to take some of the things that I've learned in my experience at Amazon and bring them to a company that was at a much earlier stage of its growth, to help it achieve its ambitions. And so at Compass, a few things appealed to me, number one, the culture of the company was very appealing to me, the focus on the customer, and the entrepreneurship principles, that Compass has really resonated with me. 

And number two, it's an industry that really has not been transformed by technology in the same way that many others have. Three, the industry is a massive industry. And so the potential benefit by being the company that drives that transformation is phenomenal from a career growth and a learning perspective, and from a business opportunity perspective. And the combination of those things was what attracted me to Compass. And what I'm trying to do is bring some of the things that I've learned at Amazon, from a leadership perspective, to Compass to help the company achieve our ambitions here.