Most companies that win at home stumble the moment they cross a border. The systems crack, the culture does not translate, and the early trust evaporates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kashif Ansari has spent years avoiding that trap. As Co-Founder and Group CEO of Juwai IQI, he helped grow a six-person idea into a technology-enabled real estate group operating across Southeast Asia, the Middle East and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a recent interview, he shared how that happened, what AI is doing to the business now, and where he believes smart money is heading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Key Takeaway<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kashif Ansari is the Co-Founder and Group CEO of Juwai IQI, a property technology and real estate group that connects buyers, sellers, developers and agents across multiple countries. The company name comes from IQI, short for International Quality Investment. The “international” was deliberate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As Ansari explains, six founders set out to change how the real estate industry works, with a clear plan to go global from the very beginning. That ambition sounds obvious in hindsight. At the time, it meant a handful of people declaring global intent while still being unknown in their own market. Kashif points to two foundations. The first is background. The founding team came from corporate roles with international exposure, so the mechanics of operating across markets were familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second is the platform itself. He argues that most property platforms serve a single party, either the agent or the buyer. IQI was built to connect the full chain: developer, investor, buyer and agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the part he emphasises most is culture. The company invested heavily in building a strong local culture first, then carried that DNA into each new market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do you build a company that is global from day one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where Kashif is most direct. He has watched many strong local businesses break the moment they try to scale across borders. His first warning is about readiness. Build a scalable product before you need it, not after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine growth suddenly jumps. If your servers buckle and you fail customers during that first surge, the trust is gone, and you are out. In his words, if you want to go big, be ready. His second warning is about flexibility. Founders often guard a single, rigid vision. He argues that the opposite wins abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being agile means understanding local culture, local ethics and the local way of doing business, then merging that with your system. That blend, he says, is what creates a durable platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kashif is unambiguous here. He believes AI is not a five-year story, but a two to three-year one, with something new arriving almost daily. For IQI, the impact shows up first in language and research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Entering a new market once meant heavy manual analysis of areas, products and demand. Much of that now happens at the click of a button. The sharper example is outbound work. He describes AI handling calls and booking appointments at a volume no single person could match, so agents wake up to qualified meetings and focus on closing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He puts a number on it, attributing a roughly 60 percent increase in sales to AI. He frames that as a headline figure from inside the business rather than an audited statistic, so treat it as directional. His warning for everyone else is blunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, people see AI as a Google search engine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The advantage, he argues, goes to those who learn how AI actually works and build it into their workflow, not those who use it like a search bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That view lines up with the macro trend. One 2025 analysis cited by regional press estimated that AI adoption could contribute between 13 and 18 percent of Southeast Asia’s GDP by the end of the decade, reshaping how businesses operate and how households access services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, IQI’s bet on AI is an early version of a shift the whole region is moving toward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Want to build a real estate career in a company that scales with AI? IQI agents work across borders with technology that does the heavy lifting, so they can focus on people and deals.<\/p>\n\n\n \n\n
\n\n\n\nTable of contents<\/h2>
\n\n\n\nWho is Kashif Ansari, and what is Juwai IQI?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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To be global, we built quite hard on our local culture, which is the DNA of IQI, and then transformed this into the global setup.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nWhy do companies fail when they expand internationally?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How is AI changing the way businesses scale?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The bigger picture beyond IQI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n