Mumbai: PurpleYo, an online market place for commercial real estate in India, is looking to raise $15 million for its expansion. The data and analytics firm said it is also eyeing co-working space and lending opportunities to SME players.

“Our attempt was to create a marketplace model for commercial real estate. Currently, most platforms offer end-to-end transaction and advisory for residential players. We saw an opportunity to provide a platform for SME clients,” Amit Banerji, Co-founder, PurpleYo, told.

Bootstrapped PurpleYo has 750-million sq ft of commercial real estate listed on its platform.

PurpleYo said it has listings from 22 cities. The company gets enquiries for about 300-400 million sq ft on a monthly basis.

Banerji said SME clients were typically those who require smaller commercial or office spaces.

“We also realised that many office seekers — especially in SMEs/MSMEs space — also look for other services like funding (to fund deposits or buying offices outright), furniture fit-outs and even hiring at certain levels,” he said. The company has tied up with 200 vendor partners to offer all these services on its platform.

The two-year-old firm said it also connects users to developers. “We are a B2B firm and our major revenue source is from the commissions we earn on the transactions,” Banerji said.

He said the company is looking to list one billion sq f. of commercial properties by the end of this year.

Speaking about the fund raising, he said the company is in discussions to raise $15 million. “We expect to close the fund raising by the end of the year,” he added.

Co-working space

Additionally, Banerji said that PurpleYo has also ventured into co-working space. “We recently launched our first co-working space brand — Table Space — with a 30,000-sq-ft space in Hyderabad. We hope to have at least half a million sq feet of co-working space operational in the next 12 months”.

Banerji said the largest demand for commercial space comes from Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi and NCR.

The company has also launched PurpleYo’s financial solutions — a fintech platform that understands the details of the loans required and accordingly assigns the loan application to the right bank or financial institution.

Source: The Hindu Business Line