PropTiger.com, Housing.com Join Hands to become India's Largest Digital Realty Player; US$55 million Investment Pours In
In a strategic move, PropTiger.com and Housing.com have decided to join hands to come up with what would be India's largest real estate services company. The move is expected to usher in a new climate of realty services and transactions as two of the most trusted real estate brands join forces. With this marriage, prospective buyers and tenants will now have easy access to end-to-end services such as personalised searches, virtual tours, site visits, legal and financial advisory, a guide to investments and assistance in property registration to negotiations, home loan services as well as after sales management.
Dhruv Agarwala, Co-founder and CEO of PropTiger.com would serve as the CEO of the joint entity. Speaking on the occasion, Agarwala said, “We are excited to join hands with Housing.com. The deal is a continuation of our efforts to bring the best-in-class services to consumers and create a unified technology-driven platform that is capable of serving all needs of consumers, developers and brokers, with respect to buying, selling and renting of homes. Housing.com has established itself as a formidable online brand and we admire its consumer-centric product innovation. The timing of this deal is just right.”
Jason Kothari, CEO of Housing.com has decided to move on to pursue other opportunities in the Indian Internet space. He will continue to be an advisor to the joint entity, through the end of February, 2017. He says, “I am proud of the exceptional progress the Housing team and investors have achieved together in the past 18 months. Housing.com's partnership with PropTiger.com, is the next transformational step to realise our vision of becoming a full-service online-to-offline real estate services company. Housing.com and PropTiger.com share similar values — to provide trust, transparency and simplicity to the home buying journey. The joint entity will be well-positioned to establish market leadership in a large and rapidly changing marketplace. As I move on to my next opportunity, I am glad to leave behind a strong foundation.”
This merger brings together consumers and stakeholders to approach each other and transact through a single platform. PropTiger.com's expertise in professional off-line transactions — to the tune of $1.5 billion since its launch in 2011 — is a perfect complement to Housing.com's popularity as an online platform with over four million visits every month.
News Corp remains the largest shareholder of PropTiger.com, and owns 61.6 per cent of the REA Group. Representatives of REA and Softbank will join the board of the joint entity, which will continue to be chaired by a News Corp representative. As part of the transaction, REA Group Limited (ASX: REA) will invest US$50 million in the joint entity, with an affiliate of Softbank investing US$5 million.
Henry Ruiz, Chief Digital Officer, REA Group; Simon Barnett, Sales Director, News Corp, and Jonathan Bullock, MD, Softbank Group International, will join Raju Narisetti (chair) , Ravi Adusumalli from SAIF Partners and Prashanth Prakash from Accel Partners, as investor directors on the board of the joint entity.
The new investment in the PropTiger.com-Housing.com combination is another step in REA Group's strategy, along with News Corp, to become market leaders in Asia.