Square Yards Consulting Pvt. Ltd, a real estate listings and advisory firm, has raised $12 million from the private equity arm of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group.
Square Yards will use the funds to strengthen its team and expand its presence to more than 25 countries, the company said in a statement on November 9.
The company had raised $11 million from a group of high net worth investors last year.
Founded in 2013 by Kanika Gupta Shori and Tanuj Shori, Square Yards is an online-to-offline real estate transaction and aggregation platform with a presence in 10 countries.
“With this collaboration, the company will be able to draw on Reliance’s extensive experience, particularly in scaling up the business to a higher growth trajectory and creating significant shareholder value in the process. Besides capital, we will also get access to best practices in running large consumer businesses at scale, with the participation of Reliance,” Gupta Shori said in a statement.
Square Yards said it has built a large team of real estate advisers and has done transactions worth $400-450 million a year. Further, the company claims to have a net revenue run rate of $1.5-2 million per month.
In June 2015, the company acquired the property search website Realizing.in in cash and stocks, followed by the acquisition of Singapore-based property consultant LUXE Real Estate in an all-cash deal in the same month. In October last year, Square Yards acquired Ahmedabad-based design studio Oryden Tech Labs.
Other start-ups that Sqaure Yards compete with in the Indian online real estate space includes Softbank-backed Housing.com, News Corp.-backed PropTiger.com and CommonFloor.com.
“Timing of this investment couldn’t have been better for us, with the government’s blow on black money and RERA (Real Estate Act) kicking in soon, real estate will get consolidated, organised and institutionalized” said Tanuj Shori in a statement.
Source: livemint
