It is not realty projects, but websites marketing them that seem to have caught the eye of private equity and venture capitalist firms. Several start-ups offering real estate services are attracting funds, as investors see scalability in the model.
As more consumers browse the web for property searches, private equity players say they are seeing a huge growth opportunity from both consumers and developers.
In the last couple of months, several such firms have scaled up their offerings, either via technology or distinctive offerings, to attract more traffic to their sites.
Proptiger, owned by Delhi-based PropTiger Realty, is in talks with existing as well as new investors to raise another $20 million (₹120 crore) by the year end.
“It is not just end consumers, but also developers who list in our portal. We have over 36,000 projects on our site. From an investor perspective, they see action in the services sector which is why they are keen to fund,” said Prashan Agarwala, co-founder, PropTiger.com.
Proptiger has had two rounds of funding totalling about $7 million. Agarwal said the company, which works as an online broker for residential real estate, has executed over 10,000 sales.
As per available industry data, about 40 lakh houses have been searched online, and a few thousand properties are sold through portals. Pankhuri Srivastava, CMO, Grabhouse.com, funded by India Quotient earlier, is also looking for a third round of funds. “Investors have understood that the focus has shifted from developers to portals, as these are less disruptive in nature. Once real estate portals achieve scale, they will obliterate the need for brokers.”
Bala Despande, Managing Director of private equity firm New Enterprise Associates, added, “Real estate has always been a sector with high consumer interface. There is a lot of service requirement which such portals can provide, rather than an online classified site”. IndiaHomes, another property portal, which raised funds recently, expects to close deals worth over ₹30,000 crore over the next three years. Housing.com has also raised about $19 million from Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners, early this year.
Advaitya Sharma, Co founder, Housing.com, told BusinessLine that real estate being a huge industry, “it is all about getting the product right and backing it with services”.
CommonFloor.com also received $30 million in a new round of funding recently. The funding was raised from existing investor, Tiger Global. It had earlier received ₹64 crore from Tiger Global and Accel India.