SoftBank invests around $75 million in Housing.com

Mumbai/ New Delhi: SoftBank Corp., the Japanese telecommunications and Internet corporation, has made its third investment this year in the Indian e-commerce space.

It has invested around $75 million in online real estate portal Housing.com, two people directly familiar with the development said over the phone.

The news was first reported by The Economic Times on Wednesday.

With three transactions this year, SoftBank has become the second largest investor in the country with investments to the tune of $912 million. Mint reported on 28 October that SoftBank, the largest shareholder in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, invested $837 million in e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal.com and online taxi booking service Ola. It has pledged to invest a total of $10 billion over a decade in the country.

Mumbai-headquartered Housing.com is owned and operated by Locon Solutions Pvt. Ltd which was founded in 2012 by 12 engineers from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, with an initial investment of Rs.60 lakh. It raised around $19 million in June this year. The investment was led by Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. Helion had invested Rs.48 crore, Nexus Rs.43 crore and Qualcomm Rs.24 crore, stated a Mint report on 19 June.

In a telephonic interview on 22 October, Advitiya Sharma, co-founder of Housing.com, told Mint that the company was looking to list 15,000 properties each day by the end of 2016.

"We have operations in 45 tier I and II cities and are looking to expand to new regions. We are also looking to list service apartments on the site by early December this year," he said.

The company launched its home loans and rent agreements category this month, for which it has partnered with six financial institutions-Citibank, L&T Finance Holdings Ltd, Axis Bank Ltd, DHFL, PNB Housing Finance Ltd and Bajaj Finserv Ltd.

Housing.com competes with 99acres.com, magicbricks.com and CommonFloor.com. CommonFloor.com raised $30 million from its existing investor-American hedge fund Tiger Global Management Llc.

Investments by venture capital and private equity firms have surged in the fast-growing but still nascent property website space.

Investments have risen to about $12 million across seven deals in 2012 from about $3.9 million in two deals in 2011, according to estimates by researcher VCCEdge and Mint, based on disclosed transactions. In 2013, so far, there have been five other investments in property websites, three of these adding up to $18.8 million. Details on the other two were not disclosed.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.