PropTiger And Housing.com Come Under One Roof
PropTiger’s CEO Dhruv Agarwala will be the leader of the new joint entity.
PropTiger.com and Housing.com, two of India's real estate platforms, have joined hands to become the largest online real estate services company in the country.
PropTiger.com’s promoter News Corp will invest $50 million through one of its subsidiaries, REA Group Ltd., while Housing.com’s promoter SoftBank Group Corp, will pump in an additional $5 million in the merged entity.
“The joint entity will be the only player in India offering the full range of online and offline services in the real estate space, such as personalised search, virtual viewing, site visits, legal and financial diligence, negotiations, property registration, home loans and post- sales service,” read a statement put out by Housing.com. The merger will strengthen PropTiger’s “full stack online-to-offline (O2O) services proposition”.
PropTiger’s co-founder and chief executive officer Dhruv Agarwala, will lead the new entity while Jason Kothari, CEO of Housing.com has "decided to move on to pursue other opportunities in the Indian internet space". Kothari will, however, participate as an advisor to the joint entity till February, the statement added.
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.Dhruv Agarwala, Chief Executive Officer, PropTiger
News Corp, the American multinational company is currently the largest shareholder of PropTiger and owns 61.6 percent of the REA Group. Given the involvement of the company, its Sales Director, Simon Barnett will sit on the joint entity's board as a investor director, accompanied by Henry Ruiz, the Chief Digital Officer of REA Group and Janathan Bullock, managing director of SoftBank Group International. Other investors in the merged entity include SAIF partners, Accel Partners and Nexus Venture Partners.
BloombergQuint had reported on the merger in December last year.