Catcha Group-backed real estate technology company, Instahome, appointed Leon Kong as Malaysian Country Manager and Kambiz Khanlari as Chief Technology Officer as part of their efforts to scale the company.
Leon has an enviable pedigree having served the industry for nearly two decades, helming leadership roles in high-growth online real estate and PropTech businesses. In 2003, Leon co-founded iProperty Group, one of Southeast Asia’s most successful startups that now operates in several Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. iProperty Group was later acquired by REA Group in 2015 for MYR 2.241billion (USD 534 million) as the largest property classifieds merger in Southeast Asia.
During his time with iProperty Group, Leon built strong relationships with an eclectic mix of real estate agents and developers and built a dedicated team that drove sales growth.
With 15 years of focus on the digital transformation of Malaysian real estate primarily in the real estate agents segment, Leon recruited more than 50,000 agents, successfully convincing them of the advantages of online advertising solutions that have today managed to amplify the growth and impact of their real estate business.
In 2020, Leon joined JuwaiIQI, an Asian leading PropTech group as the online advertising solutions General Manager. In 2021, JuwaiIQI achieved a record number of residential property sales, with 31,000 transactions completed globally.
Coupled with Leon’s strong client-centricity, his function as the Country Manager for Malaysia will see the strengthening of the company’s day-to-day operations, reinforcing client relationships across every stage of the engagement lifecycle and driving business development.
Kambiz joins Instahome following an impressive record of experience in different facets of technology having honed his skills in industries such as InsurTech, Office Automation, and Hardware technologies for over 15 years.
Kambiz, who is an industry veteran, has spent 2 years in iMoney where he spearheaded the technology team in the FinTech sphere where he worked closely with banks, insurance providers and telecommunications companies across Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines to run a comparison platform.
Prior to iMoney, Kambiz held multiple leadership positions within iProperty Group, including Head of Software Development Team and Lead Cloud Architect. Kambiz was instrumental in building and scaling iProperty Group’s technological capability and team across Southeast Asia. Kambiz has vast experience leading various diverse and multicultural teams across Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Australia as they reinforced and scaled their regional digital platforms.
In his new role, Kambiz will be responsible for complementing the assembly of agile solutions across multiple channels and touchpoints aside from leading product roadmap and development while creating data-infused digital experiences for clients, optimising cloud-enabled solutions to continue transforming the company’s offerings.
The appointments are part of Instahomes’s efforts towards further building on its growth momentum. Eric Tan Leong Yit, CEO and Co-Founder of Instahome said: “Considering the shifts we are already witnessing in renters behaviour, tremendous opportunities are abundant. In our mission to provide a seamless home rental experience for tenants, agents and landlords, we need to further align and evolve our capabilities to be more forward-focused, ensuring that we are able to truly create value for each one of our stakeholders. We are working on an alchemy of digital tools that will help us realise this.”
“This is why I am thrilled to welcome both Leon and Kambiz to the team. Their vast experience and rich expertise will strengthen our capabilities to support the growing complexities of our clients. The duo will help us in reinforcing our commitment to make renting a home as easy as buying a T-shirt online.”
With Leon and Kambiz onboard, Instahome will be introducing a slew of new solutions that is in line with Instahome’s commitment to making home renting seamless for landlords, agents and tenants alike.
In February 2022, Instahome was recognised as one of the top 10 fastest-growing companies in Malaysia based on year-over-year (YoY) traffic growth for 2021 by SimilarWeb.
With a strong focus on quality listings, Instahome continues to match hundreds of new tenants with their dream homes each month. 50% of all physical home viewings conducted through Instahome resulted in a successful rental deal, 5 times higher than the industry average.