Tiger Global Leads $210 Million Round by India Proptech Unicorn
Real estate platform NoBroker raised $210 million at a valuation topping $1 billion.
(Bloomberg) -- Real estate platform NoBroker Technologies Solutions Pvt raised $210 million from investors led by Tiger Global Management, General Atlantic and Moore Strategic Ventures at a valuation topping $1 billion, the latest Indian internet startup to join the unicorn club.
The Bangalore-based company offers “brokerage-free” renting, buying and selling of homes and provides other property-related functions such as residential community management and financial services. It’s India’s first internet unicorn in the real estate segment and has raised $361 million so far, according to a statement from the company on Tuesday.
The company, among a rapidly growing group of Indian startups attracting foreign venture investors, will use the funds to expand its business and build machine learning and artificial intelligence into its platform to smoothen transactions. The startup also plans to develop its community app and marketplace, NoBrokerHood, which has signed up 10,000 groups so far.
“The objective would be to aggressively grow and reach 100,000 societies in next two years,” Amit Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive officer, said in the statement.
Renting as well as buying and selling property in India is a chaotic, haphazard industry dominated by street-corner, one-person real estate shops, leaving consumers hoping for more transparency on rents, property prices and brokerage fees. A new band of digital startups are attempting to streamline the business and eliminate the intermediaries.
NoBroker was founded in 2013 by Agarwal and two other alums of India’s leading engineering school, the Indian Institute of Technology. It has 7.5 million registered properties and 16 million users have made transactions on the platform.
The startup operates in India’s six biggest cities including Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, and also offers services to help with home loans, packing and moving, legal documentation and online rent payment.
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