Quikr merges CommonFloor.com with real estate biz

New Delhi: Online classifieds player Quikr today announced the merger of CommonFloor.com with its real estate vertical QuikrHomes. Quikr will continue to operate both brands in the market. The merger, which is expected to be completed over the next two to three months, will give CommonFloor.com access to Quikr’s 30 million consumers, Quikr said in a statement. QuikrHomes, on the other hand, will benefit from CommonFloor’s structured data and domain expertise, it added. “The combined force of two entities will create a strong online real estate industry leader, which has the largest inventory and property seeker traffic in the country,” it said.  No financial details of the deal were disclosed. “This is Quikr’s fourth and the biggest strategic move in the real estate category since the launch of QuikrHomes about four months ago,” Quikr said. Pranay Chulet, founder and CEO of Quikr, said there is “great synergies” between the two companies. “With a highly successful recent campaign, launch of industry defining Street Vision, and now today’s announcement, QuikrHomes is off to a great start in 2016. We expect this transaction to not only accelerate the growth of QuikrHomes, but also our other verticals,” he added. Quikr recently acquired Indian Realty Exchange (IRX), a mobile-first aggregator of real estate broker community and RealtyCompass, a platform that provides builder rating and project analysis. It also made a strategic investment in A N Virtual Tech that offers detailed real life imagery of streets and buildings across India’s top 50 cities. QuikrHomes connects customers from over 1,000 cities and towns across India and it helps conclude two lakh plus transactions per month. QuikrHomes is one of the key verticals for Quikr as 35 per cent of its revenue comes from it. Launched in 2007 by Sumit Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani, Bengaluru-based CommonFloor.com has raised over USD 60 million (roughly Rs 400 crore) till date, and counts Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Google Capital among its investors. CommonFloor has over 5 lakh active property listings from over 200 cities and over one lakh residential projects listed. Online real estate space is witnessing consolidation. Recently, Rupert Murdoch-backed PropTiger acquired rival Makaan.com for an undisclosed amount. Mumbai-based Housing.com has led a number of acquisitions. It has acquired a community forum on buying and selling homes (Indian Real Estate Forum), a company focused on doing due diligence of new real estate projects (Realty Business Intelligence), and a software for developers to manage and enhance their marketing and sales efforts (HomeBuy360). PTI