The Room Xchange is proud to present a new partnership with compare and connect enabling you to save money on your utilities.
About this episode
In this episode of The Room Xchange podcast, Ludwina Dautovic talks with Neil Saligrama, the founder and CEO of compare and connect. They discuss how the company is revolutionising the Australian and New Zealander markets in services like energy, broadband, and insurance. Neil shares his journey of moving to Australia, the challenges he faced with utility providers and how these experiences led him to create Compare and Connect.
Origin story
The platform simplifies the complex industry of utilities, enabling consumers to make informed, cost-effective choices. Neil details the evolution of the company from a telesales organisation in 2010 to its pivotal shift in 2014, where it combined comparison and connection services under one roof.
Bill consolidation
The discussion also covers the practicalities and benefits of using compare and connect, including the potential savings on essential services and the ease of switching providers. Additionally, Neil introduces an innovative app, 1Bill, aimed at consolidating bills and further simplifying service management for consumers.
Our partnership
We conclude with the partnership arrangement between The Room Xchange and compare and connect. If you click on this link it will allow you to compare your own bills and support The Room Xchange at the same time.
Contact The Room Xchange
Please leave us a review
Click here for Apple reviews
Connect on our socials
Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Linkedin
Sign up on our website
www.theroomxchange.com
The Room Xchange is proud to present a new partnership with compare and connect enabling you to save money on your utilities.
About this episode
In this episode of The Room Xchange podcast, Ludwina Dautovic talks with Neil Saligrama, the founder and CEO of compare and connect. They discuss how the company is revolutionising the Australian and New Zealander markets in services like energy, broadband, and insurance. Neil shares his journey of moving to Australia, the challenges he faced with utility providers and how these experiences led him to create Compare and Connect.
Origin story
The platform simplifies the complex industry of utilities, enabling consumers to make informed, cost-effective choices. Neil details the evolution of the company from a telesales organisation in 2010 to its pivotal shift in 2014, where it combined comparison and connection services under one roof.
Bill consolidation
The discussion also covers the practicalities and benefits of using compare and connect, including the potential savings on essential services and the ease of switching providers. Additionally, Neil introduces an innovative app, 1Bill, aimed at consolidating bills and further simplifying service management for consumers.
Our partnership
We conclude with the partnership arrangement between The Room Xchange and compare and connect. If you click on this link it will allow you to compare your own bills and support The Room Xchange at the same time.
Contact The Room Xchange
Please leave us a review
Click here for Apple reviews
Connect on our socials
Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Linkedin
Sign up on our website
www.theroomxchange.com
Welcome to the Room Exchange podcast helping you rent better. In this podcast, we're having conversations with industry leaders in the rental market, along with everyday renters, sharing fascinating stories, insights and tips to help you rent better. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Neil Salograma, founder and CEO of Comparing Connect, a company revolutionising how Australians and now New Zealanders make informed choices in services like energy, broadband and insurance. In an era where cost saving is not just beneficial but essential, comparing Connect stands out by offering personalised comparison tools that help consumers and SMEs navigate the maze of options to find the best, most cost-effective solutions. Under Neil's leadership, the company has become a key player in making choice a reality for everyone, ensuring you're getting top value without the hassle. Join us, as Neil shares how Comparing Connect can be your ally in finding those crucial savings in today's economy. Neil, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks very much for a warm welcome, Bina. It's fantastic to be a part of this conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now you and I met last year when I came into your office in Melbourne to solidify our partnership. So straight up for the listeners, I will announce that Comparing Connect and the Room Exchange have now formed a partnership, which will benefit you. Now we'll talk a little bit more about that throughout the conversation, but I wanted to get Neil on the show today so that he can explain in better detail how Comparing Connect works and how it can benefit our users. Neil, can you share the inspiration behind founding Comparing Connect? I think that's a really great place to start. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:Just before I talk about the business, I'll just give you my personal story. So I came to Australia from subcontinent about 22 years ago and, as any young person coming into the country, I found a lot of difficulty in obviously selecting utility providers and trying to connect them and trying to find a right deal and all of that. The things for me were quite new and I found myself in odd situations not having the right knowledge to make the right choice. When I founded this business, the ability for us was to really make things simple. It's a very complicated industry. Each industry has its own technical nuances where a common man would really struggle understanding the technical jargons in the market. So the premise of Comparing Connect is quite simple. It is to enable the comparison and connection of utility services across A and Z and making life very easy and simple, saving time and money for consumers and helping them to find a right choice for whether it's energy services or gas services or a telco services, water services mainly all essential services.
Speaker 1:In summary, how long ago did you start the company?
Speaker 2:Neil, actually, we started a tele-sales company in 2010, but then evolved into Comparing Connect in 2014. What I found was there were two separate markets. One market was simply offering comparison services and, to name a big brand back then was iSelect. In 2012, 13, 14 was a massive brand just doing comparison. And then, on the other side, you had businesses like ConnectNow and Direct Connect, which were very dominant brands in the connection field, and I found a connection where, if you could bring those two individual capabilities under one roof and thankfully at that stage no one was doing comparison and connection under one roof and hence the name we found Comparing Connect. We got the name and we just started the business and, yeah, 2014 was when we onboarded our first client in the Moor space.
Speaker 1:It's quite a fascinating story for one founder to another. I'm always intrigued by how founders solve a problem for themselves and then create a business around it. That's essentially how the room exchange started as well. So yeah, You're like, I didn't really plan for that.
Speaker 2:I just found an opportunity where it was a problem to be solved and I had to solve my own problems through innovating this business and eventually it led into a successful foundation of a very good and a successful business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, congratulations, I take my hat off to you. That's quite a story. All right, so let's talk about how compare and connect actually works. Can you just give us a just a simplistic rundown of somebody who's maybe never heard of it before, or has heard of it but has not used it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, like in essence we're in a heart to heart. We're a sales business, but we also now are a technology business, because without tech it's pretty hard to really make any business work in this day and age. But essentially, if you look at energy market, it's state based deregulation. So you got the Eastern States mainly Victoria, new South Wales, southern Queensland, south Australia fully deregulated, which means you got number of providers offering different energy pricings and products. So what our platform enables, in both direct to consumer and direct to business, is the capability for those customers to come to a website and find a right deal. So it enables you to compare If you have a bill. If you don't have a bill, it still helps you to navigate and still find a right deal for yourself. So it gives you a range of choices.
Speaker 2:We work with a wide variety of retailers across various subverticles, and then it brings down the choice of your liking to eventually choose one. And what we've done to make it easy is if you go and search individual website, it takes you a lot of time, energy and effort. We've brought all those key elements into our website and made the journey quite simple. So what would take you normally 20 minutes, 30 minutes to solve and find a solution. You could do it in two or three minutes. So that's the essence of it, and we started back in 2014 in just the energy market, and now we expanded that same services across many other verticals, which includes telecommunications and water services, and then, as you said recently, into insurance services too. So it's just broadly becoming wider and broader. We can cover all elements of services to our clients and customers.
Speaker 1:So one of the things I've been experiencing lately is an issue with our internet provider and the amount of time that I have wasted on their website.
Speaker 1:Thank goodness they had chat as an option as opposed to just calling through. I think it was like 18 megabytes per second or something upload, and I'm paying for 100. And they're constantly trying to tell me it's just a headache trying to resolve it and, to be quite honest, I'm over them and I'm ready to move on, and you're right in that it can take so much time going back and forth. I think one of the things that I experienced, Neil, is when you're with one supplier for a very long period of time, it almost feels like they just get so used to having you, or that they don't have to worry about you because they'll know that you'll stick around, and I think, yeah, something like compare and connect. What that does I'm hoping it does anyway is maybe I'll ask you the question does it actually then put these service providers in a place where they're a little more keen to do better by their customers? 100%?
Speaker 2:I think.
Speaker 2:Look, the aggregation service across the market takes away the pain points for a customer to deal with the retailer directly, and that's their sense of being any aggregate out in the market, whether it's in the finance space or the insurance space or in the utility space.
Speaker 2:So, like in your particular situation, for example, if your existing provider is not giving you the right service and technically all it takes is basically for you to log on to a website or reach out to us and we'll be able to switch you across to someone we think who is right for you, and obviously you'll have a range of choices to pick from and they can switch you out to that new provider within a few minutes. So in that way, you'd rather be with the provider who's prepared to look after you, rather than being with the provider who thinks you're part of the furniture and doesn't give the right attention. Yeah, the process makes it so easy for you to really switch. If you want to switch, whether you're switching for the reason of service or for competitiveness of the product, it's, at the end of the day, it's your call and it's your choice, and we just make it easy for you. So I'm not sure if this is part of the service.
Speaker 1:But I'll ask a question anyway because I'm sure people are thinking it. So what if I'm in a contract with another provider and I want to go to compare and connect and then I find a better deal and I want to transfer over? What are my options in that case?
Speaker 2:Oh, look the generally the contracts in the energy space these days are pretty. It doesn't exist in the energy space Telco unless you've got a front end modem, which they're paid for, or any particular fixed component which comes with it installed in your property. That's what binds you into a contract. Often telco services are paid in advance, so you pay a month in advance for your service. So if you have to switch and if you have not taken any of those, you can pretty much switch without even worrying about being in contract or not contract. But if it's, let's say, for example, you're in contract and that token amount is probably quantum of say 100, 200 dollars or whatever, and there is an arrangement we can look to solve the problem on how we can induce some bonus or incentive for those customers wanting to switch. That's really handy to know.
Speaker 1:So, given the current economic climate, how much do you think people can expect to save if they actually did a comparison to say, on electricity, gas, maybe in Wi-Fi? Let's just look at those three basic services.
Speaker 2:Look, there's a wide range of eventually in energy. It boils down to the usage of energy before quantum of bill comes into play. But I would say if you're abreast and you're doing this on a religiously, at least once a year sort of thing, you should be saving good couple of thousand dollars amongst the three service. If you haven't done it for, say, three years or five years, definitely some money on the table you're leaving for sure, and that could be in a range of $500 to a few thousand dollars there.
Speaker 2:And you serious that much, yeah, the energy rates do change on an annual basis. Prizes have increased over the last 10 years and there are new solutions, including solar, and many other things have come into market too. If you haven't checked into it, you could be on a default plan without any discount, because usually if you have signed someone three years ago, the contracts are for a year or two and you fall back onto a default plan which takes away any discount and the discounts in, say, for example, victoria, are the quantum of 20 to 25%. So if you're losing that out on your energy, even if your bill is, say, 200 bucks a month, 25% of that is 50 bucks and you look 600 bucks there just on one energy bill. Then you add gas and then you add telco. So there are different quantms. But yeah, by spending five minutes if you could save a thousand bucks, that's time and money well spent and saved, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and we'll have got everyone's attention. Grab a pen. The website address for our partnership page, which we'd really appreciate that you go to, is the room exchange, that's XCHANGE, the room exchangecomcomau, and we'll have that link in the show notes as well. That's absolutely incredible. I had no idea that it would be that much, and we're just talking about three services there. So while we're on the topic of services, can you just lay out I know you have mentioned a couple of extras like insurance and things like that what are the exact services that you actually offer?
Speaker 2:comparisons, look we're full fledged in energy, which is all energy services electricity, then we have gas, then we have broadband, which is all full across the market, across all the states where we've got deregulated services available. Then we've now stepped into insurance space, so we have insurance services, which is general insurance I'm talking about, and also potential health insurance. They're all the key verticals we currently are catering, that's good, that's a good range there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a good range there, all right, so I want to just sort of shift the tone of the conversation a little bit and utilize myself as a case study example for how one might use compare and connect when moving. So my scenario is that just before Christmas I was informed that the owner of our rental property we rent where we live and then we rent out the house that we own we thought we'd be here for at least five years that was what we were informed of when we first moved in for three years in owner wants to sell and so we have to move on in April. So before we move into our next place and obviously we jump on compare and connect, what are the ideal steps for something you want myself to take?
Speaker 2:Look. Firstly, moving is certainly a stressful period. It's one of the most stressful top three things for people to do, because there's so many things to do when you're looking to move from one house to the other. Where we would come into play is as soon as you think you're about to move and you've found your property, you should contact us. We could enable you in a range of things there. Obviously, as I said to you will help you to disconnect your existing property and the services out there which is electricity or gas. Then we'll enable you to reconnect those to your new property.
Speaker 2:If you have an existing account with a particular retailer and you want to move with that retailer, we can do that too. I'll connect you with a whole new range of services and new retailers of your choice. We also can help you with the removal list. We've got a good partnership with our team and they can enable you for the removal list service and then water service, then the broadband service. Then, if you're moving into a property and it's your own property, then we can also help you with the general insurance and get you the home and content covered. If you're going and tenetting, then obviously we can look at just the contents only and stuff Generally. They're the key, basic things which one would do when you're moving, and it takes a lot of time, energy, effort to do it Without worrying much. Just get in touch with us and we'll have a team ready to make sure every part of that journey is ticked and it's done immaculately.
Speaker 1:That sounds heavenly. I have moved too many times in the last nine years.
Speaker 2:This will be the third time in nine years that we've moved there you go, that certainly this time would be the easiest for you in terms of moving at least these services.
Speaker 1:I hope so. Now, I've already spoken to one of your partners in terms of getting a removal list, and I'm really thrilled with the conversations we've had so far with them as well. Moving is an incredibly stressful live experience. It is, yeah, and one I hope to not have to do for at least another five or 10 years. Now We've already started packing and it's like we're two months out. I have a list, like I'm a list girl, and whenever I do something that I know there's a chance it's going to happen twice, I create a list for it. So I don't have to rethink the process and I will say that there's a good chunk in that list that is actually about the management of utilities and services that are required for packing down and then moving into a new place. So what you're saying is that I can pretty much get most of that done just by going to our compare and connect page. That's really helpful.
Speaker 2:It's a specific place that you'd go to if you're moving or you just jump on and yeah, if you go to our website or just ring our in-bout number, you see there as a client for that. It just clearly asks you if you're moving or you're comparing and if you just click you're moving. This range of services you find.
Speaker 1:Great, and anyone that goes to our link, you guys will know that it's actually come through us and that's right. Take care of the room exchange clients. That's wonderful. Alright, I imagine, like you did say before, that you're technically a tech company as well, and I get what that's like. I started building the room exchange as a house sharing platform and now we're a tech company and tech does drive the majority of businesses. Now Can you tell us about some of the innovative tech features that compare and connect users to make shopping around more personal for users? Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:Definitely Look. One of the things in a comparison space technically was everybody was quoting on an estimation prize. There was no actual prize of the property because it does need to integrate with a technical call, m-sats, which is the inherent thing, which gives you the tariff of the particular property and their meta type before you start quoting. So we embedded some of those technology into our website so we can really personalize services, given accurate quote of that property and the type of property. And one of the things we also built is our own technology to bill read, an image or a PDF. So if you have a bill handy, you can either take the photo of the bill or upload the bill on our websites and within a few seconds will read the bill. We know exactly what your usage is, we know your name, we know where you live, we know your usage, so it'll help us to accurately quote the right deal for you. And that innovation just helps people to make the comparison smooth, hassle-free, frictionless and quick. And that's one.
Speaker 2:Secondly, usually these services of aggregation is reliant on a human talking to a human and post-COVID people have now been so tech savvy where everything's turned digital and electronic and now I've got an end to end service, which is purely online. Whether you want to compare or you want to connect services, you don't have to talk to any human being. You can make the choices yourself and you can navigate through and you can switch all of these services the majority of these services without having to have a chat with anybody. So all these things we've done now in a market which is so regulated, so complex in nature, and we've brought the time down to a few minutes to complete these services, and that's got a long way in our investment in technology and making it very friendly for consumers to adapt into new circumstances in the current world and make it very affable and easy for them to use.
Speaker 1:Do you come from a tech background? Now, look, I'm a qualified engineer.
Speaker 2:I did my masters for RMIT in the applied science and electronics, but I got into sales and as soon as I finished my degree because at that stage I picked up selling timeshare products and never looked back. So, technically qualified engineer, but to be honest, I didn't use those skills for good 15 years until some of the events led for us to really turn and spirit the business into more tech led capabilities. So the last five years has been fundamentally focused on driving the business more through tech and its innovations. And we've got also a new app we're building called One Bill, which is quite unique to market and the room exchange. Business and partners can get the right benefit.
Speaker 2:The One Bill is a bill consolidation technology which brings all bills in one place, enables you to switch providers, pay your bills, keep everything in one place and never miss a time to pay your bill on time. So that just makes it easier. So we tick three boxes with both comparison services and connection services and then eventually with One Bill which is a consolidation. So all the three C's we've enabled for a consumer. So that makes it like literally 360 degrees for any customers regarding any bill. They could solve those problems through us or our affiliated businesses to manage the entire household services.
Speaker 1:I love the idea of the One App. That's fantastic because I know myself apart from my electricity provider, where I have gas and electricity with them. I have to put a constant reminder in my calendar to check the gas electricity bill or check, because I actually don't like to do auto payments, I like to be on top of it and otherwise it just falls in the background, whereas I think this way, if I can consolidate water, gas, electricity, wi-fi, mobile, like all of that in the one place in the One App and I'd imagine it sends me a reminder or something like that does it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah, yeah and exactly. Most of the customers are exactly like you wouldn't want to leave the control on to enabling the providers to debit money, because sometimes you never know what gets debited. So you start losing control on your bank account and your expenses. So you want to be on top and see what's getting paid and what you're paying and what your expenses are, why you're paying those bills. And that's the sense of what One Bill, bringing technically what we call the four pillars into play, which is the convenience, reporting, savings on the bills you make and the control, so that the four major pillars on which we think Will enable the customer, to the right level, to make the right choice. So that's called one bill. That's correct, numeric. One bill, dot com yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, trippy, I have to dig a little bit further into that. So, with the housing crisis being in the state that it's in and 13 inches rate hikes, middle class now a two page x away from losing their home, where are you for seeing this whole issues with housing and the cost of living in the next year or so?
Speaker 2:I think we're coming out of code. As you can imagine, it is going to be a tiger economy and it just all across the world interest rates gonna Still stay high till the end of the year or probably first quarter of next year, and then maybe might just slightly come down, but it's certainly not gonna go down to what was back in 2018, 2019, 2020. So you gotta come up with new ways to save money or increase your income. Many increasing incomes no easy because at the end of the day, you work for a company and there's only that much you could do, so that things under your controller expenses. So what is the conscious around that? The fact that you're only spending what you need to spend. So you know, I feel that having that control and spending that extra five minutes could save you a few thousand. Not just across the services we do. I would just go across your home loans. I would go across to your insurance. I would go across to Anything. You're spending money, including some of the pay tv services.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say streaming apps how many of them where you'd have just download and just put your Card details and this ten bucks, twenty bucks, getting debited every month and you don't even get to know. You gotta balance the income and the expense to. So we will try and do whatever we can through the services we offer to compare and connect businesses to Save money and time for the customer. But I do find what with the interest rate staying high as they are in the housing market where it is, it's not gonna be easy. But I also would say australian is in a far better position than most of the other top nations out in the world there in terms of what they're struggling, compared to the australian size. And that's how australians are fairly well positioned in terms of the thing. But if you could be a little bit more smarter Then I'll be icing in the cake, to be honest yeah, look, I completely green.
Speaker 1:I'm actually very astute when it comes to going out of our finances. I do it every month. I'm looking at what's going out, what's going in, looking at doing this type of credit card to get the points. Is it really benefiting us? What are we using? A point, son, the live streaming services we have. I think you should actually incorporate live streaming services and I agree.
Speaker 2:I agree it's a good idea and I would think about this for a while now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause I imagine something like that would actually then force them to look at what it is, that how much they're charging and what they're providing. It's really interesting. I know we're spoiled for choice now. I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, neil, but I remember growing up in a little country town called how Long Does, outside of Aubrey, yeah, and all we had on TV was Channel 4 was the only commercial channel, and Channel 1 was ABC. That was it, and TV finished at midnight.
Speaker 2:That's true. Yeah, that's true. Like you literally had one or two channels, but now it's out on TV. You got hundreds. So I agree, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Alright. So before we wrap up I just want to say it's just been a delightful experience working with you and Penny over at Compare and Connect to come on board. I'm so glad that Penny actually reached out to me I think it was about June, july last year to bring us on board as a partner. And how can our users actually benefit from going through the room exchange? How can the room exchange benefit from having people actually use our partnership to use Compare and Connect?
Speaker 2:Oh look, I think this service is not limited to any class or any segment of people. It's for everybody, Essential services for everybody. So everybody, whether you own a house or you rent a place. There is energy bill, there is broadband, and we're here to save money and time on that. So every single customer of yours we allocated resources to make sure they're looked after in a best possible way. We also looking to bring some innovative, restricted offers to only your base of customers. We can get some extra advantage and discounts for those customers. So we're working on wide range of those things to bring more value for your customers to get benefited. They have to keep an eye on your website and stuff. For next few weeks. We're bringing more value in terms of savings and also wide variety of new services like motor insurance and a few things like that. So anything they will want to pick and save money on will be expanding our services to really cater the needs there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wonderful. Thank you for that. And just to take your transparency, the room exchange is currently not charging users to list. So this is a way for us to monetize our services well, without it coming out of your pocket, and provides benefits to our users. And you can be assured that Compare and Connect are going to take care of you and we will inform our users on a regular basis throughout email newsletter of these various different offers that Compare and Connect are offering. So Grab a Pen. The link to that is theroomexchangecompareandconnectcomau, so please use that link, if you're listening, to go and get your comparison and connections done. And, neil, I'm sure there's going to be some people, and possibly even some businesses, that might want to have a conversation with you or your team about possibly coming on board themselves. If anyone wants to have a conversation with you, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Oh, look at my email. Simple. You can reach me out at neil at compareandconnectcomau, or you can find me on LinkedIn, neil saligrama. I'm probably the only one in the country with that name, so easy to find me. I'm happy to share my phone number, which is 0416809258, if they want to contact me. I'm happy to partner. I'm happy to encourage anybody who is wanting to look into this part of the industry to save money or help their customers to save money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, terrific, and we're really focusing at the room exchange on how it is that we can help our users, how we can help me get through this really awful housing crisis that we're experiencing. It affects everybody. Whether you're financially okay or not, you've got friends or family that are struggling. Everybody is affected in some way, and some are more than others. If anyone's listening, please support us as we support you, and thank you very much, neil, for your innovation, for taking the time to talk with us today and for partnering with the room exchange. We're very grateful.
Speaker 2:No, thank you so much and it was great chatting with you and we look forward to more interaction and partnership to grow from one level to the other. So thanks so much for being so accommodative and explaining your viewers about our services. Thank you so much, absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:Bye for now. Thanks for listening. If you're looking for your next rental, head over to the room exchange, australia's first verified house sharing platform. Our profiles make it easy to match you based on personality, values and lifestyle, and you can choose to rent or offset your rent, saving you time and money. To find out more, go to theroomexchangecom. You can connect with us across our social media platforms at theroomexchange or email admin at theroomexchangecom.