Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with hipages Group (ASX:HPG), Founder and CEO Roby Sharon-Zipser
Lel Smits: hiPages Group, Australia’s leading platform connecting homeowners with tradies is continuing to expand its ecosystem with new AI powered tools and upgraded hiPages for business app and new member benefits designed to help tradies win more work and run their businesses more efficiently. With more than 12 million jobs posted, more than 33,000 tradie members and further product updates expected. I’m joined by CEO, Robbie Sharon-Zipzer to discuss how hiPages is positioning itself for the next phase of growth.
Robbie, welcome to the Stock Network.
Roby Sharon-Zipser: Thanks for having me, can’t wait to get into it.
Lel Smits: Absolutely, hiPages, as we all know, has become the go-to marketplace for connecting homeowners with tradies.
But how are you evolving the platform beyond simply matching these jobs? And also what does that mean for future growth for the company?
Roby Sharon-Zipser: So we are becoming known now for connecting households to businesses in the home improvement space. And so that’s a change in some of the narrative. We’ve done tradies really well, but the hi in hiPages actually stands for home improvement.
And we are broadening our TAM. And so we’re very excited about all of the technology that we’ve built over the last few years to access the bigger TAM. While on technology with AI, you’ve been rolling out AI features that are really designed to help tradies to, quote, faster manage jobs more efficiently, also improve the customer experience.
Lel Smits: But Robbie, how did these innovations help both tradies and homeowners? Also, why do you think they’re important for keeping users engaged?
Roby Sharon-Zipser: Absolutely, so we’ve got two customers. We’ve got homeowners or households that use us to post work and research in the pre-hire and post-hire phase. So there’s gonna be AI injected into the whole connection process there when you’re thinking about hiring a business to do work for you in your home.
And for the businesses on our platform, we’ve created AI that helps those businesses, quote, more accurately, which we all know is a problem, using data to support that. And the AI can generate quotes for the trades, estimates, generate invoices for those businesses. And then right across the business, we’re using AI to ensure that our customers are getting great service.
Lel Smits: That is certainly super helpful for anyone who needs a quote. And really, as you continue to invest in new products and AI, what’s giving you the confidence that the business can keep growing? Also, from an investor perspective, what do you think they should be paying attention to as your strategy unfolds?
Roby Sharon-Zipser: Well, where do I begin? There’s so many elements to that question, but let’s just start from the top. So obviously hiPages is a business that’s been around for 22 years.
It’s profitable, it generates cash. We are focused on growth and continuing to generate that operating profit to achieve our longer-term margins, moving towards that rule of 40 as fast as we can over the next few years. In terms of that growth, we’re changing the experiences with AI that households enjoy, and as tastes change on how they expect outcomes for jobs to happen, we’re doing more of that.
So now you can do a video recording of your job and an AI will transcribe that, and then our matching algorithm will connect you with trades immediately, really just recording what you need to get done and everything is taken care of for you. So we want jaw-droppingly good experiences for the household, and we want an amazing experience to give our trade businesses, our home improvement businesses, just a seamless business-in-a-box experience. And we’re using AI across all of those things.
Lel Smits: Robbie, I appreciate the update from hiPages and look forward to seeing your results when they come out soon.
Roby Sharon-Zipser: Fantastic, thank you.
Ends