By Anuj Puri

In the last few years, the Indian real estate industry has witnessed a fundamental, structural digital transformation. This technological shift took its rightful place at the center of the industry’s agenda at the CREDAI NATCON 2026 convention.

The burning question in the industry isn’t whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change our industry, but where do we go from here?

At Anarock, we were well ahead of this paradigm shift. Back in 2019, we started to develop our own proprietary artificial intelligence model, called ASTRA. We saw that the old way of marketing real estate, which relied heavily on building massive lists of broad, unfiltered leads, was becoming inefficient and expensive. What we needed was actionable intelligence, not just data.

ASTRA uses predictive analytics in order to analyse patterns in consumer behaviour to identify the most qualified leads. That filtering is essential and allows our sales teams to concentrate their efforts on only those enquiries most likely to convert.

And the results of this targeted, AI-powered approach have been very real. We have used ASTRA to increase primary housing sales by as much as 15% in most projects – more in a some projects in tech corridors. For our developer partners, this means a staggering 20X ROI on their investment in our AI platform.

We have been able to remove market noise to lower customer acquisition costs and shorten the typically long property sales cycle. But AI’s true potential for real estate goes way beyond CRM and digital marketing.

As highlighted  at CREDAI NATCON 2026, AI is now fast-tracking from the theoretical technology showcase to the ground in active construction sites. We are seeing AI being used for ongoing tracking of construction, quality control before problems arise and even robotic inspections of worksites.

Physical delivery of real estate projects is now entering a measurable, highly optimised era. Predictive, AI-assisted visual inspections can save developers massive amounts of time, capital and compliance hassles by catching architectural and structural deviations early. The next big wave in PropTech will probably involve a heavy dose of computer vision, drones and IoT sensors to make construction sites continuously measurable and a lot more efficient.

We are transitioning from a digital lead generation phase to an ecosystem wide upgrade. We are aware that this is a permanent shift, and have provisioned significant capital and commitment toward AI and technology infrastructure. The reason is simple, yet profound in its implications – AI is no longer a speculative luxury; it is fundamental corporate infrastructure.

As these technologies continue to develop, the overall efficiency and accuracy of their operations will improve drastically. Really exciting times are ahead for the industry. The intersection of PropTech and AI is changing the way we operate, changing the game forever from buyer discovery, to project onsite execution.

(The author is Chairman, ANAROCK Group. Views are personal)