A European PropTech View, with Harri Majala, GBuilder

Welcome back to ‘A European PropTech View, by Dilan Omari-Clark’ our Q&A focused on European PropTech’s.

Our Q&A series is an opportunity for our European team, headed up by Dilan Omari-Clark to discuss all things PropTech, Start-ups, and Career with different founders from across the continent. Each week we will ask PropTech innovators burning questions and quiz them about their product, we hope you find it insightful and enjoy getting to know the founders as much as we have.

This week we have been in touch with Harri Majala, Founder & CEO at GBuilder.

GBuilder digitalises the customer journey in residential construction projects. It is the only software to integrate Building Information Models (BIM), web-based user interface and dynamic 3D, VR and AR-models into one. Customers are part of the process from start to finish, including sales, material customisation, home configuration and the building process. Residential builders and developers are able to keep their home buyers in the loop like never before, with full functionality and transparency. Material customisation, management and configuration are easily accessible, allowing builders to set pricing, upsell and add their own branding, whilst customers can keep track of their budget and see what their home will look like. GBuilder isn’t just about sophisticated software, it’s perfectly practical with everything a customer needs to monitor their house build, including checklists, appointment booking, electronic documents and a printing tool.

How was the Aldar Properties accelerator programme? What were your successes and/or challenges?

The Aldar Scale Up program was a great experience. It was well organized by startAD and packed with very useful education and training sessions that ran over a period of a few weeks. There were also many opportunities to speak directly to Aldar teams, from different departments and seniority levels.

The biggest success is, of course, that we were selected from the cohort to move ahead to a pilot project.

What are your plans for the UAE?

We see that the UAE market has huge potential as the construction industry is adapting the BIM and customer oriented thinking more. We are establishing a local office in the UAE and one of the founding team members will be moving there to ensure the success of Aldar cooperation and market entry in general.

How did you find yourself working in PropTech?

I actually have a degree in Economics, from Helsinki School of Economics. I worked in the stock exchange and in other financial positions after graduating, but after meeting my wife I moved back north to the city of Oulu and got back into our family construction company. I ended up running it for over a decade. During my time there I was facing issues with internal and external processes, especially related to the end users and homebuyers. I looked for a solution that could help us, but I was not able to find a solution that would provide a holistic solution to our problems. That is why I founded GBuilder in 2013.

At what point did you realise there was a gap in the market, and you had the product for it?

I was introduced to the BIM in 2012 and realised on the spot that this was the future. So we have been BIM based already when we came out with the first version in early 2015. It was a risk, as the adaptation of the BIM was not that high, but that changed quickly. So I would like to say that I knew from the start that we have a great product with an excellent market fit, but to be honest, it took a bit longer to be 100% sure that we made the right call.

What is a frequently asked question you get about your product?

We are getting a lot of inquiries about the BIM, naturally, but also about different integrations to other solutions as the industry is moving towards more holistic solutions and gathering the data, which we are able to produce in real time, with the help of BIM…