4YFN: AI changes the renting
We asked Carol Jiang, global general manager at Badi, about the new trends in startup development and how these are influencing Badi.
Badi is the Barcelona-based room rental platform that enables people to list, find and securely book rooms that suit their needs, from anywhere in the world. We use artificial intelligence (AI) to provide a more accurate, unique and fast solution to the growing housing needs in the big cities. The algorithm shifts through listings to find the right rental outcome and it is this technology that makes our offering different from the rest as we can provide such a tailored and efficient service. Our mission is to find and unlock every single living unit available in the world to answer the needs of our community. We want to reshape the rental infrastructure and make city living accessible to everyone.
The biggest trends we see are the adoption of AI and mobile solutions. In practice, there is rarely enough time to make endless visits to view rooms and, in major cities especially, they are snapped up too quickly to hang around. Our platform uses AI to eliminate the need for these visits by making flat and roommate hunting easy. Even if you live on the other side of the world, you can find your match and easily secure your room safely with our online payment technology.
Essentially, we use intelligent algorithms to pair up perfect flatmates according to factors like age, tastes and interests. We want to make city living accessible to everyone by cutting out the middle-men and giving people more control when it comes to renting a room. As a PropTech start-up, we are centred around AI, algorithms and data – it is these technologies that allow us to become the quickest and most innovative room rental marketplace.
Our solution is the first in the PropTech space and we’ve already seen encouraging adoption across the rental market, addressing different challenges. For instance, ‘virtual property managers’ use bots to help renters to log issues, book in services and contractors, and help tenants fix small problems and repairs.
AI allows us to match people based on their personalities. For instance, we know from our data that smoking and having pets are the most annoying traits of a flatmate.
AI can also eliminate initial bias, providing an arguably more accurate match than first impressions. There’s an overused phrase, “I didn’t think I would like you when I first saw you”, between people that on paper could become best friends – AI can pick up on that much faster and create connections for life.
Machine learning helps when enhancing user experience in the whole platform flow. For instance, when bringing demand and supply together, it is able to speed up the process by optimising towards previous matches.
We’ve also developed a recommendation engine for listers that learns about the matching process between landlords and tenants and suggests which are the most ‘effective’ users to live with. This speeds up the renting process, meaning landlords do not have to wait for candidates to search and request their flat, because Badi recommends them beforehand.
