Housing.com revenues double in FY18
News Corp.-backed realty portal Housing.com’s revenue more than doubled last fiscal year, helping it become one of the top three players in the real estate classified business, a top company official said on Sunday.
In January last year, Singapore-based Elara Technologies, which owns PropTiger.com and Makaan.com, bought Housing.com — a startup founded in 2012 by around dozen IIT graduates — in a major consolidation in the Indian online real estate business.
Apart from News Corp. and its Australia-based group firm REA, Elara Technologies has SAIF Partners, SoftBank and Accel Partners as major shareand holders. It has raised $105 million so far from investors.
“In Housing.com, we achieved 110% growth in revenue and 75% growth in traffic during the last fiscal,” said Dhruv Agarwala, who is the CEO of all the three brands — PropTiger, Housing Makaan. Even in the first quarter of this fiscal, the company posted a 77% growth in revenue year-on-year, he told PTI in an interview, but did not share the exact financial details.
“This showcases the market’s faith in all the innovations we created last year post merger. While last year’s performance has firmly established Housing.com amongst the top three players in the real estate classifieds business, the company is well on its path to increasing its revenue by over 50% this fiscal year,” Agarwala said.
Housing.com earns revenues from advertisements placed by developers, brokers and home owners. It also generates revenues by providing marketing tools to builders like 3D Visualization and Augmented Reality. At this growth rate, he exuded confidence, that Housing.com would become market leader within a couple of years.
Housing.com competes with 99acres.com and Magicbricks.com in real estate classified business among few others. “While Housing.com had an excellent product, great brand and a talented team, the focus on monetisation was not there,” Agarwala said.
Moreover, he said, the “uncertainty around the future of the company for almost a year prior to the merger had affected team morale and caused the business to be in a state of limbo”.
Agarwala was referring to the events that led to sacking of Housing.com co-founder and then CEO Rahul Yadav in July 2015.
NEW DELHI: