• Shaheen Al Khudhari, Founder & CEO at Ajar Online


• 11.11.2019 06:05 am

An Interview with Shaheen Al Khudhari, Founder & CEO at Ajar Online. 

Financial IT: What is Ajar?

Shaheen Al Khudhari: Ajar is a property management platform that’s redefining the landlord and tenant experience. Ajar helps landlords, property managers, and real estate owners collect rent online securely, manage properties efficiently, and report performance seamlessly. Our platform also allows tenants to pay their rent and home-related expenses online in less than 60 seconds.

Financial IT: Who are your major clients? Who is your target market?

Shaheen Al Khudhari: Ajar Online currently serves around 8% of Kuwait’s market, including some of the biggest real estate companies in the country such as Wafra Real Estate. We are also active in the UAE with FAM Living being one of our biggest clients, as well as in Saudi Arabia. We are expanding into other parts of the MENA region by the end of the year. 

Our property management platform is completely scalable, so our target market includes everyone from an individual landlord who’s leasing a single apartment, to large real estate companies with thousands of units. We also serve both residential and commercial properties.

Financial IT: Could you please tell us more about property management platform?

Shaheen Al Khudhari: By using Ajar, landlords can:

● Send automated rent and invoice reminders to tenants
● Track collections in real time and from wherever they are, instead of spending days on
reconciliation
● Track maintenance requests and feedback in real time, and communicate directly with
tenants to solve them
● Manage multi-lease activation and expiry
● Pull automated reports to understand the performance of each property

And a lot more.

Financial IT: Please give us a real-life case example of applying your service?

Shaheen Al Khudhari: Landlords and property managers in the Middle East typically depend on building security guards or assistants to collect rent. This causes multiple issues for both landlords and tenants. Landlords risk theft, losses, and costly manual work. Tenants experience inconvenience when withdrawing huge sums of cash and chasing down collectors to pay their rent. With Ajar, landlords save time and money collecting rent every month, and tenants are given the flexibility to choose how, when, and from where they’d like to pay their rent. So a tenant who is traveling can still pay her rent on time, and a landlord who is on vacation can still track in real time whether his tenants have paid their rent. This is one of many use cases for Ajar.

Financial IT: What is unique about Ajar and what makes the product different from competitors?

Shaheen Al Khudhari: Ajar Online is unique in the way it focuses on improving both the landlord and tenant experience. For landlords and property managers, our platform supports all types of customizable, home-related payments. So property managers can request payments for service charges, parking fees, utilities, and more. We also provide a maintenance and feedback tracking system to simplify communication between landlords and their tenants, as well as automated reporting to keep track of the performance of their properties.

As for tenants, we give them complete flexibility to securely pay rent on their own terms, and get rewarded for it. Ajar is the only solution in the Middle East that gives tenants the option to pay through credit card, debit card, or make deposits at 36+ Pay@Partner collection points. It is also the only platform in the region that makes rent payments rewarding through AjarRewards, where tenants can enjoy discounts and giveaways from exclusive rewards partners.

Financial IT: What are the key milestones for Ajar that we should look for in the next couple of years?

Shaheen Al Khudhari: In the next few years, we’re focusing on building a globally scalable product that empowers landlords and property managers from anywhere around the world to collect rent online securely and manage properties efficiently.

We’re also focused on building features and providing market insights that allow us to become the number one resource for real estate decision making, as well as property management.

Through AjarRewards, we’re also pushing to make rent rewards as essential to the tenant experience as credit card rewards are to any banking customer.

Discover more about Ajar Online at https://ajar.com.kw/