Quikr's realty vertical turns profitable; FY19 revenue may rise two-fold to Rs 170 cr

Online classified platform Quikr's real estate vertical has become profitable and its revenue is likely to more than double to about Rs 170 crore this fiscal driven by a series of acquisitions like HDFC Realty and CommonFloor.

With 30 million monthly users, Quikr is India's largest classifieds platform with a valuation of over Rs 10,000 crore. It runs multiple vertical businesses across real estate, automobiles, education, jobs, services and goods sectors.

According to sources, Quikr's revenue from real estate vertical has reached about Rs 14 crore per month in July 2018, a three-fold jump from a year-ago, despite overall slowdown in the property market.

The real estate division reached profitability in March this year on the back of high margins from brokerage business and accounted for 35 per cent of the company's overall revenue during the last fiscal, they added.

The real estate vertical contributed 35 per cent of Quikr's overall revenue last year.

Quikr's total revenue was Rs 109 crore during the 2016-17 financial year. The company is yet to declare its financial results for 2017-18 fiscal, but sources said it is estimated to have doubled.

Quikr has made many acquisitions in the real estate space during the last few years.

The latest one being in December last year when it acquired HDFC's two subsidiaries HDFC Realty and HDFC Developers in an all stock deal for an estimated Rs 357 crore.

Before that, Quikr in January 2016 merged CommonFloor.com with its real estate vertical QuikrHomes. Then acquired home rental startup Grabhouse in November 2016.

Some of the other acquisitions are -- Indian Realty Exchange (IRX), a mobile-first aggregator of real estate brokers and RealtyCompass, a platform that provides builder rating and project analysis. It also made a strategic investment in A N Virtual Tech that offers detailed real life imagery of streets and buildings across India's top 50 cities.

With all these acquisitions, Quikr now has two transactional real estate businesses, a co-living business to offer shared rentals to millenials, and a brokerage business for home buying. Both businesses derive their supply and demand from its classifieds base in QuikrHomes and Commonfloor.

In the real estate vertical, Quikr's founder and CEO Pranay Chulet said the company has adopted the best business model for each segment of this massive sector.

"Whether it is property sales, single family rentals or shared rentals, each of them needs a different model that can address its market dynamics. This nuanced approach has helped us realise a phenomenal growth despite a slow sector last year, and we expect it to continue going forward as well," he said.

Since the acquisition of HDFC's brokerage business, Quikr has started expanding the transactional services it offers through its in-house as well as partner brokers.

In real estate classified and brokerage business, Quikr competes with Singapore-based Elara Technologies, which owns Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com, as well as 99acres.com, Magicbricks.com, Anuj Puri-promoted Anarock Property Consultants and 360 Realtors.

Quikr's invetsors include Tiger Global Management, Kinnevik, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners, NGP Capital, Steadview Capital and Omidyar Network.