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Real estate website <keyword id="6381425" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="COMMONFLOOR">CommonFloor</keyword>.com has obtained more funds from <keyword id="1817280" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Google-Capital">Google Capital</keyword>. It has not revealed the actual amount invested. However, media reports suggest that the figure could be $15 million. 
 
“This will further fuel our vision to empower people to realise their property dreams. We continue to exhibit industry leading growth; the money raised will be strategically invested in making the platform more robust to enable the buyers and sellers to find their match faster,” said Sumit Jain, CEO and co-founder of CommonFloor.com. 
 
“They (Google Capital) strongly believe that we will change the real estate space in the country. We look forward to their technical and operational expertise to scale up our business,” he added. 
 Accel Partners and Tiger Global had also earlier pumped in about $50 million into the company. Some of its major investments are: <keyword id="843506" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="SurveyMonkey">SurveyMonkey</keyword>, <keyword id="1658638" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Lending-Club">Lending Club</keyword>, <keyword id="1767010" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Credit-Karma">Credit Karma</keyword> and Freshdesk.

CommonFloor.com Bags Investment From Google Capital

Traditionally, <keyword id="1871871" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="property-listing-sites">property listing sites</keyword> are as drab as telephone directories. They offer huge databases and you simply activate a few filters like type of property, location and budget, and the information gathering is done. The next task is more gruelling, though. One must browse through the list of properties that has popped up post-search, check out if the information is authentic, and get in touch with owners, brokers and property developers to close a deal. In fact, the data burst on property sites is the actual pain point, says an industry expert. But some young <keyword id="428085" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="start-ups">start-ups</keyword> and not-so-young companies are doing things a bit differently, to take the long hours and the guesswork out of the house-hunting process. Check out these 5 Indian sites that stand out because of their innovative (and tech-dependent) approach. 
 
<keyword id="35061" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="housing">Housing</keyword> – credibility is the key: Set up by a group from IIT Bombay, this one-year-old start-up has a penchant for innovation. Housing started by listing the apartments for rent in Mumbai. But it has seen some fast growth and currently operates in 7 cities – also listing flats for sale. Its USP is data curation as an in-house data collection team makes sure that every apartment is geo-coded and every bit of information is genuine (you get all the essentials such as photographs, rent amount, locality rating and amenities available while some of the properties up there are the site’s exclusive). Housing has recently introduced a ‘land classifieds’ section that will allow farmers and villagers to list and sell their land assets. A bold move from an urban firm, especially as it wants to cover as many as 10,000 villages. 
 
Funding: Housing has already reached break-even in Mumbai and raised $2.5 million from Nexus Venture Partners besides securing two rounds of angel funding from several investors. 
 
<keyword id="1871872" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Flat-to">Flat.to</keyword> – niche offering: Another start-up from Mumbai, set up in April 2013 by Gaurav Munjal, but this one only caters to students looking for apartments, room-mates or PG accommodations in and around their educational institutions. Some featured colleges are already up on the site and one can check out what all they offer (from nearby flats to brokers and flat owners, it seems). Otherwise, you can check in and input your college name, and the company will get back with relevant information. After Mumbai, the start-up will expand its operations in other university cities like Pune and Bangalore. 
 
Funding: Till date, Flat.to has raised undisclosed angel funding from Aakrit Vaish, director of the mobile app analytics firm Flurry India. 
 
<keyword id="1871874" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="PropTiger">PropTiger</keyword> – mid-market focus paying dividends: Started in 2011 by Dhruv Agarwala, Kartik Varma and Prashan Agarwal (Dhruv and Kartik are Harvard alumni and co-founders of iTrust Financial Advisors which they sold to the Karvy Group), this start-up is well on its way to become really big. But unlike other portals, this company is marketing new residential developments and targeting first-time home-buyers in the mid-market segment. PropTiger has a hybrid (online-offline) business platform in place and handholds potential customers by offering a whole range of value-added services – right from sending you apartment options to organising site visits, affordability analysis and facilitating home loans. No wonder the firm’s revenues are soaring and it claims to have crossed Rs 2,500 crore in GMV (gross value of the properties sold). 
 
Funding: The traction has been good so far and VC firms Accel Partners and SAIF Partners have invested $5 million in Series A round for the next phase of growth. Earlier, PropTiger raised an undisclosed round from a number of HNIs. 
 
<keyword id="1556577" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="CommonFloor-com">CommonFloor.com</keyword> – hi-tech apps help: Not exactly a young company but this six-year-old portal needs a mention here as it has some hi-tech offerings that users love. The firm has launched an augmented reality-based property search app called CommonFloor Real Estate, which also enables GPS-based map search and helps extend all its portal services on to a mobile phone. As for AR search, a user has to input her property criteria and point the phone in any direction. The app will then track the relevant assets within a certain distance. The Bangalore-based firm also combines online property search with a community management platform. 
 
Funding: Founded by Sumit Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani, the firm has recently raised a Series C funding of $7.5 million from existing investors Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management. Accel and Tiger invested in the firm in Series A and B as well, but the amounts were not disclosed. 
 
<keyword id="1871875" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Metroplots">Metroplots</keyword> – apps and new features make it sticky: Started by Biju Ashokan in 2009, this Chennai-based firm operates a bit like PropTiger and focuses on new residential and commercial developments. The site offers some value-added services such as comparison tool, expert advice, loan facilitation, referral (when you refer a friend and she makes a purchase, you get a commission on the total value of that asset), group deal/discount and post-sales help. Metroplots has apps for both Android and iOS platforms, and could be adding more channels like property rental and reselling. 
 
Funding: Metroplots has already raised two rounds of angel funding and secured under $1 million in the second round. It is now looking to raise close to $2 million for more features and pan-India expansion.

Five Property Listing
Portals That Think Outside The Box

<keyword id="6381424" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Quikr">Quikr</keyword>, which was for months resisting a merger in its property vehicle, has finally bought the property search website CommonFloor. The acquisition was announced on Thursday; however, the amount of the deal is not announced as of now. The deal would give CommonFloor access to the vast customer base of the online classifieds firm. 
 
Quikr will now be valued at about $1.5 billion (about Rs 10,000 crore) based on the share-swap ratio, entering it into the rarefied club of Indian Unicorns, a term used for companies worth at least a billion dollars. 
 The acquisition has happened just four months after Quikr launched its own property search website <keyword id="2796396" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Quikrhomes">QuikrHomes</keyword>. 
 
As per ET’s sources, CommonFloor, which was valued at about $160 million in its last funding round, dropped down to $100-120 million for this deal. 
 
Both Quikr and CommonFloor have the New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management as an investor. 
 
Even after the merger, both brands will operate independently and would benefit from each other 
 
"(This) will give CommonFloor.com access to Quikr's 30 million consumers and harness the potential of the cross category nature of the platform, while Quikr-Homes will benefit from CommonFloor's structured data and domain expertise," read the Quikr statement. 
 
CommonFloor, which was founded in 2008, is owned by maxHeap Technologies, and is backed by venture capital firm Accel Partners and Google Capital along with Tiger Global Management. 
 
<a href="https://web.facebook.com/QuikrFans/photos/a.166622723367081.40694.124493907579963/1184932371536106/?type=3&amp;theater">Image source</a>

Quikr now owns this real estate portal

With an aim to stay ahead of its rivals in the realty and auto segment, the Mumbai-based online classifieds platform <keyword id="6381424" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Quikr">Quikr</keyword> is planning to integrate leading payment services providers’ offerings into its platform. As per Economic Times, the classifieds site, which is backed by the <keyword id="6402698" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Warburg-Pincus">Warburg Pincus</keyword> and <keyword id="526777" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Tiger-Global">Tiger Global</keyword>, has held discussions with two of the India’s two top mobile wallet providers, MobiKwik and Paytm. If the talks reach a fruitful conclusion, Quikr will get a payment service provider to present its users with an in-site payment options as part of end-to-end offerings. Upasana Taku, head of business development and merchant operations at MobiKwik, told ET that <keyword id="6360657" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="OLX">OLX</keyword> is also planning to provide similar services to its customers. "We have been talking to both for almost a year. They also enable payments right now but it is only to help the buyer have a premium listing ...These classifieds sites want to monetise on transactions they are empowering. Based on this consumer sentiment, they are getting more aggressive and interested in this," said Taku. 

	Realty and auto portals are two lucrative segments with high margins. Both Quikr and OLX are not only facing stiff competition from each other, but also striving hard to fight against other rivals like CommonFloor-.com, Housing.com and CarTrade.com.
 

	However, there is no official confirmation to this latest development as Pranay Chulet, founder and chief executive of Quikr, did not respond to a questionnaire sent by the Economic Times.

	(Image:

Quikr is building a new in-site-payment option. Know who its partners will be

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Online+shopping">Online shopping</a> is the new fad! From a dress to a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=mobile+phone">mobile phone</a> to even high-cost products such as TVs and two wheelers, internet is the ultimate thing for them. However, interestingly, the internet has not really worked its magic for one particular sector—the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=real+estate">real estate</a>! 
 While, we do see a proliferation of a plethora of online <keyword id="6354553" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="real-estate">real estate</keyword> players such as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Housing.com">Housing.com</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=MagicBricks">MagicBricks</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Commonfloor.com">Commonfloor.com</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=99acres.com">99acres.com</a> among others, most of them are majorly marketplaces for listing properties. Brokers and owners list their properties and home buyers can then contact them. And despite online portals mushrooming in this space, the real estate sector largely continues to be offline. 
 
“On the surface, this approach to selling and buying real estate seems novel and even logical. What works against it is the manner in which the real estate market actually functions in India,” says Ashwinder Raj Singh, CEO of Residential Services, JLL India. 
 
Industry players have attributed the reluctance to buy a house solely on the basis of their online understanding of the property to the fact that entire home-buying process is an emotional experience. Besides, buying a home is a cost-intensive <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=investment">investment</a>, which is generally done after a lot of due-diligence. 
 
“The home-buying process invariably involves personal inspection of a number of options at close quarters. Each option is examined from various perspectives including affordability, viability of the location, construction quality, legal sanctity of the project and appropriateness of the facilities and amenities available in the project among others,” adds Singh. 
 
Apart from the emotional quotient, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=real+estate">real estate</a> transactions are often opaque and murky, which makes it difficult for a home buyer to buy property online. Besides, a typical Indian consumer has a value-for-money mindset; hence, the real value proposition of a property cannot be understood online. Also, buyers expect the power to bargain while buying their dream homes. This is impossible to exercise while buying a home online. 
 
From a developer’s point of view, online purchase of property will not help in forming a personal rapport with the home buyer, which is extremely crucial in this sector. 
 
“In making the final choice at the end of a prolonged selection process, the buyer effectively accords it the highest distinction among all other personally inspected options. The likelihood of a home buyer making such a decision based solely on virtual information is on par with that of an art connoisseur buying a Rembrandt in an online auction,” he notes. 
 
Singh concludes that while times are definitely changing and the world is becoming digitally connected, however, internet can only be an aid to the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=real+estate">real estate</a> business but can never fully replace it. While, we agree with his views, we also feel that with the advent of new technologies, it is only a matter of time when people would be confident enough to buy a property online solely based on the virtual information available. Until then, the good old brokers are at our service! 
 
Image credit: Indiatimes

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