"Any agent that is currently using AI effectively will benefit from it in three to five years." Biju Ashokan, CEO of prop tech business Radius, expects that if they sell 10 homes annually, they will likely sell 30 to 40 properties annually.
Independent brokerages are using artificial intelligence to get a competitive edge in a real estate market that is going through its most difficult time in over thirty years. Ashokan claims that the first quarter of 2025 was "the lowest in the last 28 years." In addition to helping them survive, the technology is setting companies up for success when the market recovers.
The Self-Sustained Benefit
Ashokan has firsthand knowledge of the difficulties independent brokerages encounter, which led him to start Radius. He realized that it wasn't financially feasible to develop proprietary AI tools, lead nurturing systems, and transaction management technologies for just 50 agents while serving as the previous CEO of a small brokerage that expanded "from zero to 50 agents quite quickly."
According to Ashokan, "we were profitable, but it wasn't enough to fund the engineering aspects of products." After coming to this insight, he left his first business and founded Radius, which was created especially to provide enterprise-level technology to independent brokerages.
The timing is calculated. The conventional brokerage model needs to show more obvious benefit, as Ashokan notes: "Why does a brokerage exist? Why would you pay a brokerage a commission when you are buying and selling real estate? The majority of the work is being done for you by the agents.
His argument is not that brokerages are superfluous, but rather that they need to provide additional value to support their commission split, which is exactly where technology enters the picture. Radius offers brokerages the technology foundation they require to provide their agents with genuine value, enabling them to work more efficiently and defending the commission structure—a business model that is drawing in progressive real estate professionals.
Introducing Mel: The AI Helper Improving Customer Experiences
Mel is an advanced artificial intelligence assistant made especially for real estate agents. Mel is a proactive and reactive technology that improves client satisfaction and expedites agent workflows.
Ashokan says, "It is our AI assistant, and it is both proactive and reactive." It provides you with information on real estate when you ask Mel questions. All of the real estate data, paperwork, and other materials have been used to train it.
Mel does more than just respond to inquiries. To create a thorough picture of a client's preferences, the system examines their activity, including the properties they visit, the amount of time they spend perusing listings, the homes they like, and the substance of their communications. Compared to typical agent-only interactions, this allows for more individualized property recommendations and quicker, better-informed responses.