Housing.com's parent firm REA India's revenue rises 21% in Jul-Dec: CEO

The company would continue to invest in new products, technologies and branding-marketing activities to further grow its business and establish a significant lead against competitors, CEO said

Revenue of REA India -- owner of Housing.com and PropTiger -- rose 21 per cent to Rs 238 crore during latest July-December period on strong demand of residential properties, its CEO Dhruv Agarwala said.

The company would continue to invest in new products, technologies and branding-marketing activities to further grow its business and establish a significant lead against competitors, he said.

REA India, which is part of Australia's publicly listed firm REA, is a full-stack real estate technology firm and owns two online classified advertisement platforms Housing.com and Makaan.com as well as housing brokerage PropTiger.

In an interview with PTI, Agarwala said the company posted a 21 per cent growth in revenue to 44 million Australian dollars (nearly Rs 240 crore) during July-December period of the 2023-24 fiscal year ending June.

In the year-ago period, the revenue stood at AUD (Australian dollar) 36 million.

Agarwala highlighted that revenue from its core business, advertising and housing brokerage, grew 32 per cent to AUD 32 million.

But, the adjacency business, which is providing other related services to customers like movers and packers, insurance and mortgage, remained flat at AUD 12 million.

Agarwala highlighted that Housing.com has seen a four-fold jump in monthly traffic on its website to over 20 million compared to the pre-Covid levels on demand revival and fast adoption of digital tools in the realty sector.

During the July-December period, the web traffic on Housing.com rose 5 per cent annually and was 1.2 times than the closest competitor.

"The other thing which is good for us is that our app traffic grew by 43 per cent year on year and our share of overall app downloads is about 46 per cent at the end of the first half of the year," he said, adding that the company was focusing on driving more and more traffic to the app while improving upon user experience.

Asked about the outlook for the full fiscal ending June, Agarwala did not provide any revenue guidance but said that the housing demand has been very strong from last few years and the momentum would sustain for a long term.

REA India revenue had increased 46 per cent to more than Rs 430 crore in 2022-23 fiscal (July-June) as against nearly Rs 300 crore revenue in 2021-22.

Asked about the timeline to achieve break-even, Agarwala said the company's losses peaked in 2022-23 and it would keep reducing every fiscal year.

"We will continue to invest in the business to extend our market leadership and to become a clear number one in the Indian market. Having said that, you know, as we have committed to the analyst, that we will keep bringing down losses year on year after FY'23," he said, adding that there has been a reduction in the first half as well.

In December 2020, Australia's REA Group acquired a controlling stake in Elara Technologies, which earlier owned these three portals, and renamed it as REA India.

Housing.com, which was founded in 2012, is a proptech platform for homeowners/home seekers, landlords, developers, and real estate brokers.

It offers listings for new homes, resale homes, rentals, plots, commercial spaces and co-living spaces in India.

Founded in 2011, PropTiger.com is a housing brokerage firm. Makaan.com is an advertising platform.