Elara technologies, the company that runs real estate portal Proptiger.com, has acquired property listings and classifieds portal Makaan.com for an undisclosed sum. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The two Delhi-based companies will continue to to work independently in the immediate run, the founders said. Proptiger.com has over 500 employees, while Makaan.com has a team strength of 160.
“The businesses are extremely complementary. The idea is not to combine two same businesses and make them bigger. There is no reason for redundancies, but to play to each other’s strengths, where one and one come together to make an eleven.” said Anupam Mittal, founder and CEO of People Group, speaking to HuffPost India.
Makaan.com was founded in 2007 by People Group, best known for the matchmaking site Shaadi.com. It currently lists over 200,000 property listings and 40,000 brokers in 50 Indian cities. Some 40% of Makaan.com’s traffic comes from mobile users, the press release stated.
The founders of the companies believe the two portals complement each other, with Proptiger’s focus on the primary market and Makaan.com’s focus on primary as well as secondary markets. Makaan.com is primarily a listings site, while Proptiger is a transaction site that represents developers.
“It will create India’s largest property business in terms of revenue, valuation and value to customers.” Mittal said.
Proptiger.com has a presence in eight Indian cities, and has sold homes worth $1.2 billion since 2011. It is owned by Singalore-based Elara Technologies. Elara’s major investors include SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and Horizon Ventures. In November 2014, News Corp took a 25% stake in Elara.
“The coming together of these platforms will create a full stack real estate company, said Dhruv Agarwala, CEO and co-founder, PropTiger.com. “Makaan.com is synonymous with home buying, given its name, and one of the better products in the real-estate space, with one of the best conversion metrics.” he added.
While a slew of acquisitions and consolidation has happened in the e-commerce space, it is yet to happen in many of the verticals, including realty. Competitors are slugging it out, with venture capital funding going into investments in technology and outdoor advertising blitz.
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