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Quikr Buys Two HDFC Units For Rs 357 Crore

HDFC gets stake in listings platform Quikr.

<p>An advertisement for Housing Development Finance Corp. (HDFC) is displayed inside the bank’s branch in Mumbai, India (Photographer: Vivek Prakash/Bloomberg) &nbsp;</p>

An advertisement for Housing Development Finance Corp. (HDFC) is displayed inside the bank’s branch in Mumbai, India (Photographer: Vivek Prakash/Bloomberg)  

Listings portal Quikr will take over two subsidiaries of HDFC Ltd. for around Rs 357 crore, helping it to offer online-to-offline real estate brokerage solutions in a partnership with the mortgage lender.

HDFC approved the sale of its entire stake in HDFC Developers Ltd. and HDFC Realty Ltd. to Quikr India Pvt., according to a stock exchange filing. The sale is expected to be completed before March 31.

In return, HDFC will get equity stake in the classifieds platform. “This will be about 3.4-3.5 percent of the Quikr stock,” Renu Sud Karnad, managing director of HDFC, told BloombergQuint in a phone interaction.

The partnership will see Quikr's digital listings platform compliment HDFC's business. According to Karnad, striking a partnership made sense because Quikr had the vast online presence the mortgage lender was looking for while HDFC had the offline experience they wanted. “When you buy a house, it is different from buying something like a pair of shoes. You eventually want to talk to someone and consult before buying,” she said.

We hope to derive value from Quikr’s diversified customer base, while offering our strengths in the real estate sector.

Renu Sud Karnad, MD, HDFC 

HDFC will get access to the nearly 30 million monthly users of Quikr. “We are going to mine data and use analytics on Quikr's user database to identify those who may require a loan,” Karnad said. That means that HDFC will become the exclusive partner for offering home loans on Quikr.

The two subsidiaries contributed just 0.07 percent to HDFC's consolidated turnover in the year ended March, according to the filing. Karnad said that these units were “not non-core businesses”, but rather services they provided to customers. But they needed an online presence to fully realise their potential, she said.

Kotak Investment Banking acted as the exclusive financial adviser to HDFC for the deal. Avendus Capital advised Quikr.