In Conversation with Pitch Club Winner Paruey Anadirekkul, CEO at Spacely.ai

Spacely AI has designed over 1,000,000+ spaces for 120,000+ users worldwide. The platform offers 12+ features, 100+ interior curated premium styles, and supports more than 100+ space types, from interiors to exteriors, providing a comprehensive solution for all spatial design needs.

Online Marketplaces spoke with CEO Paruey Anadirekkul after his win in the Pitch Club competition at the PropTech and Portal Watch Conference in Bangkok.

This is what he had to say on topics including interior design, his vision for the business, the difference between buying a home and living in it, and his fundraising hopes for 2024...

Paruey, congratulations. What does Spacely AI do?

Thank you.

Spacely AI leverages generative AI for spatial design, boosting productivity and sales for businesses in real estate, furniture, materials, and professionals in interior design and architecture. Our platform facilitates scalable growth at low costs and high speed through cutting-edge design automation software and APIs.

Is Spacely AI for homebuyers or interior designers?

We started focusing on homeowners, but then we realised that homeowners don't have the know-how or the expertise of an interior designer, so we decided to shift to interior design to more deeply understand how a space is being furnished, designed, or decorated.

We're now codifying all of that into the AI. So when we're ready and have more features, we will refocus on the homeowner.

What pain points do interior designers have?

We interviewed interior designers and the pain points I see that's a common theme across all is that most of the work is very manual. They have to go to school to learn how to use programs like SketchUp and AutoCAD, for example. And it's quite outdated because it takes time—one image render takes four hours.

What if the customer wants to make a small edit and it takes another four hours? It's totally inefficient.

Meanwhile, the models they're using aren't even real furniture, they use mock-up furniture like the 3d models, which if the customer likes it, you can't find it in real life!

What is the use case for a homebuyer?

Real estate listings are very difficult to judge on their own. You often see bad-quality images taken by the homeowners themselves, it doesn't look great and it doesn't sell the property or the value.

But homebuyers have a vision, right? They want to know not just what the property looks like today, but what it will look like after they are living in it. We see ourselves adding a lot of value in this space, whereby you are no longer looking at an uneditable blank space, but you can use images of a listing as a canvas for how the buyer wants the property according to their tastes.

As a homebuyer, I can use Spacely.ai to bring together different visions and see what a particular room will look like even before making a purchasing decision.

Paruey Anadirekkul pitches in Bangkok

What numbers can you share with us? Are you generating revenue, do you have recurring users?

So, traction has been good. We launched in March 2023 and were generating revenue by June. We've since increased our recurring revenues by 5x with further growth expected this year. We have subscribers from around the world and we recently closed a deal with a big furniture retailer.

Will you fundraise this year?

So we raised pre-seed funding from SCB 10x—part of one of the largest commercial banks in Thailand—around Q3-Q4 2023.

We're now opening our seed round for USD 1 million. We're looking to fund our continued product development; we want to push a lot of features in our roadmap. We're also looking to expand our use case from interiors to property and real estate.

If we're over-subscribed we can always raise more!

What is Spacely AI currently working on?

We are now working hard to get the AI to measure the dimensions of a room based on a 2D image.

For example, we should not be recommending a king-sized bed for a room with just 30 sqft, we want to have the ability to give specific recommendations based on the dimensions of a room.

Meanwhile, we will also work on a scaling feature whereby you can input the budget you want for redesigning a kitchen, for example. Are you starting with a blank space? Do you already have cabinets? The hope is to recommend furniture and solutions based on your specific needs and financial restrictions.

What are your short-, medium-, and long-term business plans?

The short-term plan is to launch our API products to allow any businesses in the world to use our AI models, the accuracy, the high-quality renderings, and the scaling features, so where we're launching and building more to that.

The medium-term plan is to build a product database of real products to further fine-tune our model and increase accuracy. We also want to create partnerships with brands to get access to their products, like an E-commerce store.

And eventually, the long-term plan is to be able to let a customer or anyone design a room in a few clicks and implement it so they have a construction plan ready and then find a contractor to get the job done!

Paruey Anadirekkul, CEO at Spacely.ai

How did you find out about Pitch Club?

I was searching for industry-specific events where I could, you know, go raise awareness about Spacely AI, and Pitch Club came up and it caught my attention because all the decision makers are going into the conference, most are global, and come from a global audience.

So you have, you know, people from across the world coming to this conference, and they are decision-makers. So I think it was important for me to be in this event and raise awareness about Spacely AI and hopefully attract new customers, partners and investors.

How about a testimonial for PPW?

Join the conference! It was my first year this year, and I think there were a lot of amazing sessions. I particularly enjoyed the ones on SEO and hearing proptech investors share more about what they look for in their startup investments. The networking aspect of the conference was also good for us.

I've been to multiple tech conferences, but while most other tech conferences are very generalist, this is more specialized in real estate which makes it the right match for us.

Finally, a big shout out to Simon Baker for giving us the opportunity to pitch. Thank you, Simon!

Finally, what isn't the industry talking about that it should talking about?

A lot of focus on the real estate industry is focused on selling the property. But what people don't really talk about and is a very big opportunity in general is the living part.

The first five years are about moving in and maybe some minor decoration, but after five years, your home starts to age, and your lifestyle starts to change. Maybe you have a kid, maybe you're getting a divorce or a parent has passed away in a different city, for example.

I believe it's a massive opportunity for the industry. As someone with a background in property management, this aspect is also undervalued.

I can envision a platform or an ecosystem where you can find all service providers, contractors, and brokers, and the living experience is unified in one place to improve the quality of life for everyone.