Proptech start-up NoBroker enters unicorn club with $210 mn funding

Property tech start-up NoBroker has raised $210 million in its Series E round led by General Atlantic, Tiger Global Management and Moore Strategic Ventures, the company said on Tuesday. This round of funding brings the total funding raised by NoBroker to $361 million.

The online platform allows customers to carry out all aspects of real estate transactions digitally, ranging from rental or outright sale to value added services like home loans, packers and movers, legal documentation, online rent payment, among other things.

It currently operates across six cities: Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune. More than 75 lakh properties are already registered on the portal and more than 1.6 crore individuals have used the platform’s services.

The company was launched in 2013 and raised a seed round led by Elevation Capital. “ We have signed 10,000 societies till now and the objective would be to aggressively grow and reach 1 lakh societies in the next two years”, said Amit Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive officer of NoBroker.com.

“The current funding will help us reach out to more customers across current and new cities and help us streamline the entire real estate journey from search to shifting into your house to even manage your society living seamlessly with the help of technology,” said Saurabh Garg, co-founder and chief business officer of NoBroker.com

“We are seeing an upward trend in the property buying segment and this funding will help us deepen our investments in resale and primary sale verticals”, he added.

The company is planning to use the money raised to invest more in the existing markets and expand to metros like Kolkata, Surat, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam. It wants to be in 50 cities in India in the next 2-3 years.

“From Diwali, we have been seeing a huge rental demand across all the cities we are present in. We are growing faster than the pre-pandemic times at present. A lot of people left metro cities for home during the pandemic, but generally what we have seen is that they are bachelors and small families,” said Garg.

On the question of a possibility of a backlash from brokers as it expands to more cities, Agarwal said that the market is large enough for both online brokers and them to co-exist. “There is a lot of information asymmetry in the market that we are trying to solve,” he added.

The company did not share revenue numbers, but said it has been growing at three times annually. It aims to become profitable in the next two-three years.

Founded by IITians Akhil Gupta, Amit Kumar Agarwal, Saurabh Garg in 2013, the company intends to formalise India’s largely unorganised real estate industry. The platform had earlier raised funding from investors such as Elevation Capital, Beenext and KTB Ventures. Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Anand Chandrasekaran are angel investors in the company.

Homing In On Growth

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  NoBroker is a platform that allows home discovery, rentals and purchases at zero brokerage fees online

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  The company was launched in 2013 by IITians Akhil Gupta, Amit Kumar Agarwal, Saurabh Garg

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  It raised a total funding of $361 million from General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Elevation Capital, Moore Capital, Beenext and KTB Ventures till date

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  The company is present in six cities — Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune. It aims to expand to 50 cities in the next 2-3 years

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  NoBroker has signed up 10,000 societies till now and aims to aggressively grow and reach 1 lakh societies in next two years

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