Indiaproperty.com to raise $12 mn

After raising $7 million from Canaan Partners and Mayfield Fund last year, Indiaproperty.com, India's leading portal to buy and sell residential property, is planning to raise another $10-12 million. Existing investors are also expected to participate in the company's series-B fund-raising plan.

Ganesh Vasudevan, chief executive of Indiaproperty.com, confirmed the plan. He said last year, the company had raised $7 million from Canaan and Mayfield. However, the funds came in only recently, after the de-merger from Consim Info, which owns various portals, including BharatMatrimony.com, Clickjobs.com and IndiaAutomobile.com. "We see a big opportunity in the online space for selling and buying real estate. To focus on the core business, we decided to de-merge and go for another round of fund-raising," he said.

The company plans to use the $10-12 million in series-B funding to improve technology and support marketing initiatives, he added.

"They (Canaan and Mayfield) would also participate in the series-B fund-raising," he said, adding the company expected to close the deal in two to three months.

Vasudevan says the company has a strong base in the southern and western regions and the fund-raising would help the company expand and strengthen its brand in North. He claimed Indiaproperty.com accounted for 35 per cent share of the market (the number of paid builders registered in online portals), while in the South and West, it was the market leader. The portal had three million salaried and self-employed registered users in the age group of 28-55 years, he said.

Currently, the real estate sector spent about Rs 5,000 crore on advertisements, of which only two per cent was towards advertising through online media, he said, adding, "With the cost of construction rising, real estate players are looking at ways to control costs and one of the options they are considering is cutting on advertisements."

"We expect from the current two per cent, online advertisement would grow to 10 per cent in two to three years, and we need to gear up to meet the growth," he said.

Currently, the cost-per-response in print (main liners) was Rs 6,000-7,000, while in the online segment, it was Rs 400-500, he said. Portals such as Indiaproperty.com also offered other value-added service, including legal advice, arranging bank loans and insurance cover and helping to close transactions, albeit at additional costs, he added.

Last year, private equity (PE) investments in online service companies rose to $599.99 million from $593.6 million in 2011; the number of deals rose from 82 to 93. So far this year, PE investors have invested $114.3 million through 20 deals, according to Venture Intelligence data.