Online real estate marketplace HeyPillow has raised $3 million (about ₹19 crore) in ‘Series A’ funding from Hampton Capital, which the company intends to use for organic growth.

“This funding would be mainly used for adding features on the website, ramping up marketing team and promotional activities,” Co-founder Stan Dong said, adding this ‘Series A’ (first institutional funding) is the company’s second round of fund-raising.

It had earlier raised an initial seed funding (undisclosed) from the promoters.

Founded in 2010, Hampton Capital is a public market investor (with certain private investments) based out of Singapore and India.

Dong, a San Fransisco-based former research scientist, had co-founded the company in 2014 jointly with an Indian friend, whose name was not disclosed. Apart from being a platform for residential and commercial properties, HeyPillow is also a marketplace for home loans, even as it provides tools such as mortgage calculators and real estate market trends.

Making its first country, HeyPillow had launched its operations in India about a month-and-a-half ago.

“India was our first choice due to the sheer market potential. The country's real estate market is set to grow at 30 per cent over the next decade, reaching $180 billion by 2020, while the housing finance market sits at $9.7 trillion,” Dong said.

The platform, which is currently available in Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR, has already more than garnered more than 15,000 commercial and residential listings. The start-up, which competes with portals such as 99acres.com, MagicBricks.com and Housing.com, has been garnering about 3,000-4,000 listings every month.

HeyPillow is also looking at expand to Asia-Pacific and West Asian regions.

“We intend to move into Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and Dubai within the next 2-3 months,” Dong said.

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