Cityland to raise $6 mn for realty venture

The promoters of Cityland Technologies plan to raise $6 million (Rs 29 crore) to fund the expansion plans of the company’s business process outsourcing (BPO) arm Cityland BPO as well as foray into real estate consulting.

The company plans to raise $5 million as seed capital for its real estate services venture Cityland, which will be started sometime this year, said Srinivasarao Kanneganti, chief executive officer, Cityland Technologies.

Cityland is currently in talks with a few private equity players and angel investors to raise funding for the venture, though nothing has been finalised yet, Kanneganti said. “We are looking for angels, VCs and private equity players who can fund our plans and also join our board in an advisory capacity,” he said.

Cityland.In, or Cityland Real Estate Ventures, is being conceived as a pan-India real estate network which will be run through the franchisee route. “The venture has the potential to create 30,000 jobs nationally. Through this, we will offer consulting services, market real estate, arrange fundingôcollateral for buyers, do title management and insurance management,” Kanneganti said.

He said that in the event of the funding coming through, the real estate venture would generate about Rs 90 crore in revenues by March next year.

Cityland BPO started operations in Bangalore four months ago with 20 people on its rolls. It currently operates a 100-seater call centre which serves telecom customers in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. “We have been getting business of Rs 1 crore per month so far, and expect to have 2,000 people on our rolls by the end of calendar 2010,” Kanneganti said.

The BPO arm’s activities have been focussed on operating customer helpdesks, transaction processing and business research for telecom companies. Plans are on to expand the services reach to BFSI and healthcare with emphasis in the areas of retail banking, insurance, credit card processing, mortgage billing and collections.