As part of its efforts to grow through acquisitions, Housing.com is said to be in early stages of talks to buy New Delhi-based PE Analytics, a firm that owns online subscription-based real estate data and analytics platform, PropEquity.
The deal is yet to be closed, but multiple sources close to the development said the acquisition price was ₹80-85 crore.
“The companies are in talks, but at this point there is no assurance of the negotiations reaching a definitive conclusion. It will take some time before the companies can close the deal,” a source privy to the development told
PropEquity provides data on more than 40 cities in India. A source said it tracks market trends and offers data and analytics to the real estate sector.
Advitiya Sharma, co-founder of Housing.com declined to comment, while an e-mail sent to PropEquity Founder and Chief Executive Officer Samir Jasuja remained unanswered.
Housing.com, run by Mumbai-based Locon Solutions, has been looking to acquire companies in the data and research space to strengthen its services. PropEquity will be a strategic fit for the online company.
Apart from PropEquity, the company was also in talks with other firms in the real estate data and analytics space. The names of these companies could not be immediately ascertained.
Flush with funds Housing.com is flush with funds, following a series of fund-raising exercises. It raised about $90 million (₹567 crore) in December from SoftBank. The map-based home search portal was started by a group of 12 students from IIT-Bombay in June 2012.
It raised an initial investment of ₹50 lakh in 2013 from a team of angel investors led by Zishaan Hayath, co-founder of Chaupati Bazaar, which was acquired by Future Bazaar.
Housing.com then raised ₹1.5 crore from former Network18 Chief Executive Officer Harish Chawla, and $2.5 million from Nexus Venture Partners.
In June, the portal raised ₹115 crore in its fourth round of funding from venture capital firms such as Helion Venture Partners (₹48 crore), Nexus Venture Partners (₹43 crore) and Qualcomm Ventures (₹24 crore).
The company, which serves 25 cities, including the metros, has more than 6,000 brokers listed.