Grabhouse.com raises $2.5 mn from Kalaari Capital, Sequoia

Startup to use funds for technology development, expansion

Grabhouse.com, a community-based online exchange for finding rented accommodation, has raised $2.5 million (around Rs 15 crore) in series A funding from Kalaari Capital and Sequoia Capital, the company said in a release on Wednesday.

The funds would be used to develop new products, improve existing technology and to increase Grabhouse.com's footprint in the country.

"Currently, a majority of real-estate deals take place offline but there is a marked shift in this with 30% transactions being enabled through internet-based offerings," Pankhuri Srivastava, co-founder of Grabhouse.com said.

"With an increasing number of users joining the internet bandwagon, we are certain that this transition will happen at a faster pace which gives this segment an optimistic outlook."

Founded in July 2013 by Pankhuri Shrivastava and Prateek Shukla, Grabhouse.com had earlier received seed funding from a slew of investors including India Quotient, M V Krishnan of Deutsche Bank, and Chetan Bohra and Navin Ranka of RB & Partners.

The website offers broker-free experience to house hunters who are seeking rented or shared accommodations by using a proprietary engine that maps the preferences of prospective tenants and house owners.

The website uses community-based model to source and verify listing-related information. Grabhouse.com currently has presence across Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru and gets traffic of around 5,00,000 visitors per day.

"The problem of finding the right rental property or paying guest accommodation still happens to be an arduous task for the seeker and the Grabhouse team has done a fantastic job of creating a proprietary matching technology to efficiently solve this problem for the consumer. We look forward to helping them scale this to the next level to build a large and valuable platform," G V Ravishankar, managing director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors said.

While internet-based startups have been a favourite for venture capital and private equity investors in the country, real estate-related web portals have particularly attracted significant attention. In November 2014, Noida-based independent real estate advisor PropTiger.com had raised $30 million (Rs 186 crore) from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Earlier this month, Bengaluru-based online real estate platform CommonFloor.com also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Google Capital, the internet giant's late-stage growth equity fund. According to sources, Google Capital had invested between $10 million - $12 million (Rs 63-75 crore) in CommonFloor.com.