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Real estate portal Housing.com is raising about $100 million (₹620 crore) from Japanese telecommunications and Internet company SoftBank Corp, which will be used for its expansion plans.
The companies are expected to make a joint announcement in the next few days, at least two sources told BusinessLine .
“The deal is close to be signed, and it would be signed either today or tomorrow. The investment would be used mainly for expansion plans,” one of the sources close to the development said.
The companies are expected to make the announcement in the next couple of days, another source, privy to the development, said.
When contacted, Advitiya Sharma, a co-founder of Housing.com, declined to comment. The sources declined to be identified before the formal announcement.
The investment comes at a time when the online portal is looking to expand operations and become the country’s largest player in the segment. Its competitors in the burgeoning online real estate space include Commonfloor, 99acres, Indiaproperty, Grabhouse and Magicbricks among others.
Series of funding The SoftBank funding would be the fifth round of funding for the online portal.
Housing.com, a 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, the co-founder of Chaupati Bazaar, which was acquired by Future Bazaar.
Then it raised ₹1.5 crore from former Network18 Chief Executive Officer Harish Chawla, and later $2.5 million from Nexus Venture Partners.
In June, Housing.com 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 portal enables customers to search for houses based on geography, number of rooms and various other filters.
The company, which serves 25 cities across the country including the metros, has more than 6,000 brokers listed with it.
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