Transforming Property Sales and Leasing with AI: How Saran Rangarajan and Proplens Are Reimagining Customer Engagement
Introduction
Despite its vast size, the global real estate industry remains heavily dependent on manual processes and legacy systems. NUS Executive MBA alumnus (Class of 2025) Saranyan Rangarajan(Saran), Founder & CEO of Proplens AI, recognised an opportunity to challenge this inertia with a platform designed for scale, speed, and accuracy.
Drawing on more than 14 years in sales and marketing leadership, Saran enrolled in the NUS EMBA to expand his skills—and gained far more than he anticipated. We talk to him to find out about his decision and how it helped him build Proplens.
From Specialist to Startup Leader
Before founding Proplens, Saran built a successful career in marketing and sales. However, as he considered starting his venture, he aimed to broaden his skills and chose to join the NUS Executive MBA (EMBA) program.
“I was specifically from a marketing & sales background, and the EMBA opened my perspectives to learn all aspects of business building & management,” he reflects.
He explains his decision: “The programme succeeds in grooming functional specialists into generalist leaders.” And more importantly for tech founders, “the modules on data management, analytics, and AI were a catalyst toward founding a tech startup.”
He also believed that what distinguished the EMBA was its diversity, not only in terms of nationalities but also across various industries and functions. “The informal and formal interactions with batchmates from various industries were an eye-opener, and it provided me with practical lessons on process redesign and technology-led transformation.”
The Spark Behind Proplens AI
But how did the idea for Proplens first come to mind?
Saran’s vision came from years of witnessing inefficiencies in real estate sales—fragmented processes, high costs, and inconsistent customer experiences. He saw a chance to reimagine the system using AI.
“There’s disproportionate spend on marketing and sales—up to 5–10% of revenue—and a heavy reliance on external partners,” he shared in a Money FM interview. “Insights are anecdotal… teams often don’t have a structured view of why buyers are converting or dropping off.”
Proplens AI was born to address these gaps. It’s a vertical AI platform built specifically for real estate developers and agencies, designed to automate and personalise every step of the customer journey—from first inquiry to post-sales support.
“We are building AI agents that can automate work done by customer-facing teams,” Saran explains. “These agents qualify leads, schedule viewings, manage follow-ups, and respond to buyer queries in real time. It’s not about replacing humans—it’s about scaling their capabilities.”
Unlike traditional CRMs that act as systems of record, Proplens functions as a co-pilot for sales and customer service. “Each property buyer is different. It’s terrible to send one standard message to everyone. With AI, we can now send 10,000 tailored messages at scale—each unique to the buyer’s needs.”
Built for real estate, Proplens also integrates industry-specific data, such as local market sale/lease transactions, legal and regulatory information and Google Maps, to generate hyper-local, comparative insights. “There’s a reasoning layer on top,” Saran notes. “It helps buyers and sellers understand why one project may be better than another—based on real data, not just sales talk.”
Zooming Out to See the Big Picture
So, how did the EMBA help build the vision for Proplens? We asked the dynamic founder.
“You need to zoom out from your ingrained approach to see clearly what can be improved,” he says. “The EMBA helped me see the industry from an outside-in lens”
That lens shift also helped shape Proplens’ broader mission: to increase sales conversions, reduce selling costs, and free up teams for higher-value tasks.
“We project a 2X uplift in sales/leasing conversions and 30–40% reduction in costs with Proplens. But more importantly, we’re helping firms sell smarter, not just harder.”
The EMBA’s most practical impact came through specific modules that translated directly into business action. For Saran, two stood out.
“The sessions on Innovation & Creativity helped me put new AI tools to practice and shaped how we designed our product experience. International business management was another timely module in influencing how to think about business partnerships for expansion outside the home market of Singapore.”
Saran affirms, “Startups need to plan and build for regional markets from Day 1.” Today, Proplens is already operating beyond Singapore, with plans to serve markets such as the UAE, India, Thailand, and Australia.
Key Takeaways for Future EMBA Candidates
It seems that, based on Saran’s experience, the EMBA is particularly valuable for professionals facing disruption in traditional industries. After all, Proplens is a direct result of the mindset shift Saran experienced during the NUS EMBA. From refining his leadership style to informing product design and go-to-market strategies, the programme became integral to every stage of his journey. With Proplens, that mindset is now helping to transform one of the world’s oldest industries, one intelligent agent at a time.
Interested in a similar program to build your skills, broaden your perspective and help your startup grow? It’s time to explore the NUS EMBA. Get in touch with us today to find out more.
