EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The business of real estate is the profession of buying, selling, renting of land,
buildings or house. Property agent/broker in India currently do not need a license
to operate, and all the legal work related to property requires a professional lawyer.
Real Estate is an area for growth in the country. Many cities are now leaning from
Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad on how to make profits from real estate business.
Apart from the development of high rise buildings in the Delhi (which is today the
top realty destinations in India) infrastructure such as schools, malls and hospitals
is coming up in a big way that even nearby territories such as Noida, Ghaziabad,
Gurgaon and Faridabad are now seeing much land development with its continuous
expansion for big residential and commercial projects.
Magic Brick - magicbricks.com - is a high-end property portal that caters to
a global market with its unique services and novel online features. Having
been launched in the year 2006 by Times Group, Magicbricks has quickly
risen to being the best Property Portal in India. It has successfully hosted 75
domestic and over 15 international property shows around the globe. Alexa
rank in India 150
99 Acres - 99acres.com - is an web portal in India dedicated to meet every
aspect of the consumers needs in the real estate industry. It is a forum where
buyers, sellers and brokers can exchange information, quickly, effectively
and inexpensively. You can advertise a property, search for a property,
browse through properties, build your own property Microsite, and visit
other Indian and International sites. Alexa Rank in India 143
Housing - housing.com - is one of the Indias fastest-growing online real
estate platforms. They aim to give home-seekers and home-owners relief
from endless onsite visits, consultation, formalities, fake listings, and more.
With simple yet innovative interface you can easily search flats in your
locality and take a virtual tour of every property. Alexa rank in India 170
PropTiger.com was founded in 2011 by Dhruv Agarwala, Kartik Varma, and
Prashan Agarwal. The business received $2 million in funding in its first
year and in 2012, received an additional $5 million in funding from SAIF
Partners and Accel Partners. In 2014NewsCorp announced that they had

acquired 25% stake in PropTiger.com for $30 million and in 2015,

PropTiger.com entered the secondary market property deal space in
Bangalore. In April 2015, PropTiger acquired Bangalore based digital
interaction design start-up OoBI, for an undisclosed amount.
CommonFloor was founded by three computer Science graduates, Sumit
Jain from IIT Roorkee & Lalit Mangal from IIT Roorkee and Vikas Malpani
from JSSATE Bangalore in 2007 from a garage.CommonFloor has raised 4
rounds of funding from three investors. The most recent one being of around
$10M from Google Capital, just three months after receiving $30 million
funding from Tiger Global. After 8 years and 4 rounds of funding
CommonFloor is providing property search services in more than 120 cities
across India. CommonFloor is listed in 33 startups by techin asia.

MagicBricks
Magicbricks, a division of Times Internet Limited, is a wholly owned subsidiary
of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd (The Times Group) is a website that provides a
common platform for property buyers & sellers to locate properties of interest in
India, and source information about all property related issues.
Company initiatives
Magicbricks with IIM Bangalore launched the Housing Sentiment Index.[1] In this
collaboration of two leaders from Academia and Industry- the co-branded MBIIMB Housing Sentiment Index, is all set to capture the buyers mood on
the real estate scenario in India.[2]
Services
Apart from buying, selling & renting properties in India users have access to the
following services as well:
News section of Magicbricks Property Pulse [3] includes property news, home
loans concerns, legal & taxation issues, expert opinion and analysis of property
trends.
Buyer's Guide, a real estate eBook which covers all the essential steps and stages
entailed in property buying and contains answers, quick tips and expert advice on
what to look for and how to manage property buying.
PropIndex is a tool by Magicbricks which empowers property seekers and
investors with detailed information on the movement of residential apartment
prices and supply of properties in India for some major cities & has been adding
more cities on a regular basis as well.

Sahu Jain Family

(Redirected from Sahu Jain)
Sahu Jain family
Ethnicity

Agrawal Jain

Current
region

Najibabad, Bijnor
Uttar Pradesh, India

Notable

members

district,

Rai Bahadur Jagmundar

Das Jain

Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain

Shreyans Prasad Jain

Sahu Ramesh Chandra

Jain

Indu Jain

Samir Jain

Vineet Jain

They own the Times Group.

Sahu Jain family is an industrial family of India. They own the Times Group and
its parent company, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., the most widespread selling
English newspaper in the world. The members of the extended family have
interests in education (S P Jain School of Global Management), chemicals (DCW
Ltd.) and finance (DoubleDot Ltd. and Crescent Finstock Ltd).
They are of Agrawal Jain community. Sahu Jains hail from a small town
of Najibabad, Bijnor
district (near Meerut,
180 km
from
Delhi), Uttar
Pradesh, India

Members
The leading members of the family have been Rai Bahadur Jagmundar Das
Jain, Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, Sahu Shreyans Prasad Jain, Sahu Ashok Kumar
Jain Sahu Ramesh Chandra Jain, Sahu Samir Jain, Sahu Vineet Jain, Sahu Deepak
Jain and Indu Jain.
Jnanpith Awards, are given by the Bharatiya Jnanpith organization founded by the
family. The group has also founded a few other awards that are coveted honours in
the fields of fashion, movies and business in India - namely the Miss
India title, Filmfare Awards(movies) and the Economic Times Awards for
Corporate Excellence.
The Times Group has diversified into many fields. The Times of India (world's
largest circulated English newspaper), the Economic Times, FM Radio Mirchi, the
Planet M music store chain, the biweekly magazine Femina India, the Indiatimes
portal, the 24 hours English news channel Times Now, the Bollywood news and
music channel Zoom are owned by the Sahu Jain family. In 2008, the group
acquired Virgin Radio (renamed to Absolute Radio) in the United Kingdom, which
they sold after making a loss of 31 million in 2013
MagicBricks: Indias No-1 Property Site Times Business Solutions launched
MagicBricks.com in August 06, as a platform to bring together property seekers
and sellers in the real estate industry. Within three months of its launch,
MagicBricks.com achieved the status of being the No.1 property portal in India.
With its revolutionary next-gen services customized specifically to address the real
estate industry it has consolidated its position as the leader in the sector.
MagicBricks.com provides a common platform for all users, and provides a space
for property buyers & sellers to locate properties of interest and source information
about all property related issues in a transparent and unambiguous process.
Magicbricks.com is Indias No.1 property portal. With monthly traffic
exceeding 6 million visits and with an active base of over 5 lakh property listings,
Magicbricks provides the largest platform for buyers and sellers of property to
connect with each other in a clear, transparent manner. With this in mind,
Magicbricks has innovated several product features, content and research services,
which have helped us build the largest audience pool

MagicBricks.com offers a pan India coverage of over 500,000 active listings,

showcasing the Indian real-estate market. MagicBricks.com currently records over
10 million page-views per month, and comes packed with a host of tools, never
witnessed before by Real-Estate Industry including Location Map Service, Email
Alerts, Exclusive developer Micro-Sites, Virtual Walkthroughs, Rent Zone,
Luxury, Deals, Decor, etc.
MagicBricks.com observed that the majority of people, in this business, did not
access the internet on a daily basis, but conducted their business over mobile
phones. Thus the most valued services pioneered by MagicBricks.com, which
further advanced its leadership, were the Mobile & Internet convergence services,
with the launch of MagicSMS, Click to Call, Property Leads on SMS and
MagicBricks Mobile,.
Through the Magic SMS service, users can send free SMS through the website to
sellers for properties and buyers for requirements that interest them and with
Click to Call users can call sellers for free through the site. MagicBricks.com
also provides developers and real estate agents Property Leads on SMS a
premium service that offers instant SMS updates of new properties listed as per the
subscribers requirements.
Not one to rest on its achievements, MagicBricks.com launched, Indias first
Mobile Property Portal MagicBricks Mobile. This application enables users to
search for properties by type, budget and city on their GPRS enabled cell-phone.
Users can instantly contact the concerned person by sms or phone call and the
application stores the history of the contacts they have made in past sessions, for
easy recall and follow-up.
MagicBricks.coms Research and Analysis wing that constantly monitors the
property and real-estate market in the country, providing insights, impact
assessment reports, official forms, legal & taxation expertise and realty rates to
MagicBricks.com users.
With such offerings, it is evident MagicBricks.com retains its leadership position
with over 8 lakh registered users, including over 65,000 real estate agents and more
than 13,000 builders having their presence on the site.

99acres.com
99acres.com is an Indian real estate database website was bought in 2005. Its
parent company is Info Edge (India) established by Sanjeev Bikhchandani with its
headquarters in Noida, Uttar Pradesh and regional offices in cities like Bangalore,
Mumbai, Chennai etc.
The website features property listings from builders, dealers and property owners
from all Indian cities. The website has several sections.
Sanjeev Bikhchandani (born 1963) is an Indian businessman, who is the founder
and executive vice chairman of Info Edge (India) which owns Naukri.com, a job
portal.
He attended St. Columba's School, Delhi and finished schooling from there in
1981. Thereafter, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from St.
Stephen's College, Delhi, (Delhi University) in 1984. He completed his MBA
from IIMA in 1989.
Career
Sanjeev after his PG left a job marketing Horlicks at HMM (now known
as GlaxoSmithKline) in 1990 to set up two companies Indmark and Info Edge
(India) along with a partner. The first company specialized in pharmaceutical
trademarks and the second produced salary surveys and reports. In 1993, he and his
partner decided to go separate ways. Both partners got one company each. Sanjeev
got Info Edge (India. In 1997, Bikhchandani set up Naukri.com, jobs portal on a
server in the United States, and later Quadrangle, an offline executive search
business.
He was selected as a finalist for the Ernst and Young - Entrepreneur of the Year
award in 2005.

PROPTIGER
PropTiger.com was founded in 2011 by Dhruv Agarwala, Kartik Varma, and
Prashan Agarwal. The business received $2 million in funding in its first year and
in 2012, received an additional $5 million in funding from SAIF Partners
and Accel Partners. In 2014NewsCorp announced that they had acquired 25%
stake in PropTiger.com for $30 million and in 2015, PropTiger.com entered the
secondary market property deal space in Bangalore. In April 2015, PropTiger
acquired Bangalore based digital interaction design start-up OoBI, for an
undisclosed amount.
PropTiger.com has announced that they intend to branch out with offices in
Ludhiana, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Kochi, and Hyderabad. In April 2015,
PropTiger.com joined hands with Makaan.com, one of India's first real estate
online portals, to create together Indias only full stack company which provides
end-to-end customer solutions to home buyers, developers, agents, banks and
private equity investors on an integrated platform.[
While venture capital investments in Indian technology start-ups are now common,
the system is increasingly attracting the attention of multinational companies. After
acquisitions of Indian start-ups by some global majors like Facebook and Yahoo!,
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation announced an investment of $30 million in
Noida-based real estate website PropTiger.com. It was founded by Dhruv
Agarwala and Kartik Varma, classmates at Harvard Business School, along with
Prashan Agarwal, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Before starting PropTiger.com, Agarwala was CEO of GE's infrastructure business
in India. He also led institutional sales for GE in the country. He holds a bachelor's
degree in materials science from Northwestern University, a master's from Stanford
University and an MBA from Harvard. Agarwal too has formerly worked at GE.
Agarwala's first business enterprise was a financial advisory firm called iTrust that

he started in 2006 along with Varma. The idea of a property website struck them
after they realised that there weren't many websites catering to people who were
looking at property as an investment. In 2011, they sold iTrust to the Karvy Group
and decided to focus on real estate instead. While Varma was a co-founder, he is no
longer actively involved with the property business
HOUSING
A group of twelve students from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Bombay founded Housing.co.in in June 2012, currently having nine founders. The
company bought the domain Housing.com and the number 03-333-333-333 in
September 2013 for a total of $1M.
Housing.com has raised four rounds of funding since its founding in 2012. The
company raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners in
June 2013. The company used the funds to create its Data Science Lab and to
expand to four cities: Bangalore, Gurgaon, Pune, Hyderabad The company raised
another $19M in venture funding, led by Helion Venture Partners, in April
2014. Softbank have led a $90 million investment in Housing.com along with
Falconedge and other investors in December 2014. Housing.com closed two
undisclosed rounds of funding in February and March 2013. The rounds were led
by Network18 CEO, Haresh Chawla, and Zishaan Hayath, the co-founder of
Chaupaati Bazaar.
In early March 2015, the company had a nation-wide brand launch, and revealed
its new brand logo, colours and brand philosophy; with the tagline 'Look Up'. The
brand launch was advertised in national newspapers and hoardings in several cities
across the country; and notably, on the company's social media pages.
In 2015, Housing.com came into the limelight because of a spat between CEO of
Housing.com Rahul Yadav and Sequoia India MD Shailendra Singh.The conflict
arised when Rahul Yadav alleged Singh of poaching Housing.com staff.
Rahul Yadav, Advitiya Sharma and 10 other co-founders of Housing.com needed a
simple tool to find housing after they graduated. So they built one
Every time Suvir Sajan, co-founder of Nexus Venture Partners, leaves the Mumbai
office of Housing.com, he has a smile. I get emails from them at 5 am in the

morning, says Sajan about one of his investee start-ups. Not that he is
complaining. They know what theyre doing and thats refreshing to see. This is
high praise from someone who has invested in startups like Snapdeal.com and
Olx.in. I know Im biased, but Id go so far as saying they are a poster child for
the new India. Speak to Rahul Yadav, Housing.coms CEO and you realise why.
The 24-year-old from Alwar, Rajasthan, wasnt the finest, academically: He ranked
20th in a class of 30 in his Class 10 exams. Then a sarcastic comment from his
uncle about his grades changed his life. In his Class 12 board exams, Yadav topped
Rajasthan in physics-chemistry-maths, based on which he got a 75 percent
scholarship for preparing for IIT-JEE. He became class representative in his second
year at IIT Bombay and, later, secretary of its student association. As part of his
election manifesto, he had to create a question bank from old exam papers. This
sparked his technopreneurial bug and he built the popular Exambaba.com.
But Yadav wasnt a techie, so he started coding from scratch. If youre sincere at
IIT, you can get good grades. You dont need to be really smart, he says. It was
my first coding project; thats where I became interested in the online space.
The institute even made Exambaba the official IIT-B archive before eventually
shutting it. But Yadav had learnt his lesson: If something doesnt exist, build it
yourself, and if it doesnt work, move on. After a brief internship in Israel, he
returned to build apps for Google Chrome. And then, in his final year, he dropped
out of IIT. If things arent working, I can write them off, he says disparagingly.
The problem with Indian start-ups is that people spend years on the same ideas
that just dont work! He says his parents still dont know he has dropped out.
Co-founder Advitiya Sharma, 24, another self-professed small-town boy (from
Jammu) and Housings chief marketing officer, had been warned about the
difficulty of finding a house after graduating. When he and Yadav started
contacting brokers they realised how limited the information on online listed
properties was; they also realised how good the money in Mumbais real estate
brokerage business was. They eventually took a house in Powai, close to the IIT-B
campus. Many people from IIT-B were taking houses there, says Yadav. Thats
also when they figured out that since they had a good network of prospective
clients among their IIT friends and batchmates, they might as well become brokers.
The money was good. We were making Rs 1-2 lakh a month, he says.

But to go national as brokers for residential properties would require extensive

local knowledge, which they did not have. So they shifted business models: From
broking to classifieds, and Housing.co.in was born in 2012.
CommonFloor
CommonFloor was founded by three computer Science graduates, Sumit Jain from
IIT Roorkee & Lalit Mangal from IIT Roorkee and Vikas Malpani from JSSATE
Bangalore in 2007 from a garage.
The company initially started as an apartment management solution provider and
went on to be Indias leading real estate platform that combines property search,
apartment management and vendor management and caters to a persons complete
residential requirements across 150.
CommonFloor has raised 4 rounds of funding from three investors. The most
recent one being of around $10M from Google Capital, just three months after
receiving $30 million funding from Tiger Global. After 8 years and 4 rounds of
funding CommonFloor is providing property search services in more than 120
cities across India. CommonFloor is listed in 33 startups by techin asia
CommonFloor links neighbors who live in apartments by its CommonFloor
Apartment Management System. Many apartments use this service for getting
connected to the apartment community. CommonFloor launched its Mobile App
for seekers in March 2013; to provide facility to search properties and also provide
facility to list properties. CommonFloor launches National Consumer Sentiment
Index a survey of 600 consumers in six metros and 15 tier-two cities across the
country in October 2013. Real estate portal CommonFloor.com launches apartment
management offering CommonFloor Groups, which provide apartment
communities across the country better communication, management and
coordination amongst residents, owners (residents or non-residential landlords) and
Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs).Company is famous for building bridges
between neighbours in bangalore by apartment management system.

In April 2014 CommonFloor acquired flat. to, a startup that helps bachelors find a
home for rent. CommonFloor Ranked first in startup ranking by alexa ranking and
startup ranking.

REVENUE GENERATION
MagicBricks, CommonFloor and several of these real-estate portals make their
money primarily from Builders, who pay a lot to promote their new projects.
Another revenue stream for them is selling leads to brokers. Ads is only a small
part
of
it.
As for quikr, it's a relatively new platform, and right now, they are only focused on
growth, not revenue. They will open up their revenue streams, and start charging
users (paid listings, etc) once users are hooked and convinced about the platform.
Operations Review Catering primarily to real estate developers, builders and
brokers, 99acres.com source of revenue is from property listings, builders and
brokers branding and visibility through microsites, home page links and banners.
Individuals to list their requirements like sale, purchase and renting on the site.
Box 5 gives the financial performance highlights of 99acres.com The usage
parameters highlight major traction in revenue generating traffic. Number of
listings in 99acre.coms database increased by 65.1% from around 774,000 at
the end of FY2011 to around 1,278,000 at the end of FY2012. Number of paid
listings increased by 67.7% from 632,000 at the end of FY2011 to 1,060,000 at
the end of FY2012. Number of paid transactions grew by 40.3% from 23,700 at
the end of FY2011 to 33,250 at the end of FY2012 During FY 2012, Info Edge
continued to invest in 99acres.com on product development, people, and marketing
and brand building. In the process, it is slowly gaining traffic share from the
second half of FY2012, after losing some traffic share in the first half. More
importantly, as reflected in the usage data it is getting higher revenue generating
traffic. Finally, the site has managed to spread the message of utility amongst the

real estate sales community and in the process succeeded in increasing the use of
the internet within this community. allcheckdeals.com is the groups online
property broking business. The business has a commission based revenue model
that is determined on the value of transaction. The focus is on the residential
markets of larger cities and their suburbs where it can service a growing middle
class who want ease of transactions in property deals. The business has extended
its coverage to 12 cities in India. The business, which is in a subsidiary now, closed
about 1,900 sales transactions in FY2012. The operating environment was difficult.
There were also business issues like the land related disputes in Noida and Greater
Noida - our primary market and an internal re-organisation exercise.
allcheckdeals.com generated a top-line of about `108 million in FY2012 made
losses at the EBITDA level of ` 36 million.

STORY OF HOUSING.COM
Bangalore: Started in June 2012 by a bunch of IIT-Bombay graduates, online
property listing start-up Housing.com has quickly emerged as an investor favourite
and managed to pose a serious threat to traditional rental listings websites such
as 99acres.com and magicbricks.com. Over the past year, Housing.com has
expanded its operations to 10 cities, including Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and
now harbours ambitions of going international within the next 10-12 months. In
June, the start-up secured its third round of funding, raising $2.5 million
from Nexus Venture Partners and last month spent about $1 million acquiring the
housing.com domain from a US-based person and an all-3 hotline number (03333333333). In an interview, co-founder and chief marketing officer Advitiya
Sharma spoke about Housing.coms journey so far and future plans. Edited
excerpts:
How did you start, first raise funds?
For any start-up, we tend to believe were alone, we tend to think were not going
to get any support. The funny thing is if you decide to take a step forward in the
right direction, youll find a lot of people wanting to help. One of those was (angel
investor) Zishaan Hayath and his friendstheyre all IIT alumni. Zishaan and his
friends put in a collective amount of Rs.50 lakh. Weve had three rounds of

fundingthe second one was led by (formerNetwork18 chief executive

officer) Haresh Chawla, he put in Rs.1.5 crore.
How difficult was it getting initial customer traction?
This industry is seven-eight-odd years old, so the brokers and agents we went to
were used to having these kinds of platforms. We started off with an introductory
free trial period where more and more people in the ecosystem could get their
listings done through our data collection process, and once we felt that for a
particular locality we had sufficient amount of inventory, we went ahead and
launched it. The kind of demand that real estate generates is immenseevery day
on Google 1.5-2 lakh people search for flats in Mumbai only. So the moment we
launched, we did a little bit of marketing, we got some help from the media, and
slowly people started using the website and from then on, it was purely word of
mouth.
You raised $2.5 million a few months ago and then spent about $1 million on
acquiring the housing.com domain and the all-3 hotline number. Why was it
so important for you to spend so much acquiring that?
The all-3 number is very easy to recall. Someone else also asked me why we
bought the all-3 hotline, and we said that Just Dials all-8 number was great, and
the only number that could beat Just Dial was an all-3 number. There are a lot of
people in tier-II, tier-II cities who will make use of it. As far as the domain is
concerned, if you look at a dot-com domain and our international plans for the next
10-12 months, Housing.com is the next step we want to take and create a brand
that works not just in India, but globally as well.
What separates you from other listings sites such as 99acres and magicbricks?
The biggest difference between us and the likes of magicbricks and 99acres is data
collectionthey dont have a data collection team. A lot of our initial spending
went into this process.
Whats your business model, how do you generate revenue?
Right now, we charge a six-monthly subscription fee of Rs.5,000 from our brokers
and agents, and they can upload as many listings and inventories as possible. Our

only condition is that our in-house team will go ahead and collect the datathats
how we ensure authenticity and verify the data.
Are you looking to raise more funds?
Weve gotten quite a few requests (from VCs), but as of now theres not much of a
lookout from our side.

How do you plan to use your cash in hand?

Three-four months ago we went ahead and expanded in a lot of citieswe are now
in 10-odd cities. Thats where the major investment is going to be. Now we want to
focus on going deeper and deeper into these geographical areas and ensure the
business is doing great.
Online real estate websites offer real-estate developers and brokers a preferential
space on their portal at a premium price. They have advertisements or better
product placing for those willing to shell out more money for it. The price for each
advertisement depends on it's size, position and abundance. They also prepare
micro-sites for the project for a better showcase of the product. In addition to that,
they offer mass mailers to a specific target audience as they have a large database
of interested clients on their portal
Online real estate segment sees a two-fold increase in 2014 compared to 2013
When Japans richest man and Chairman of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, invested
$100 million in a two-year-old property portal Housing.com, he had flagged the
growing interest among investors in online real estate firms. Rupert Murdochs
NewsCorp, picking up a 25 per cent stake in another portal PropTiger.com, also
underscored the appeal.
Consumer behaviour

Advisory firms maintain that the online real estate segment has witnessed a twofold increase in the number of deals in 2014, as compared to 2013. The value of the
deals has also increased from $19 million in 2013 to $232 million in 2014.
Its changing consumer behaviour has brought about the sudden increase in
investor sentiment, and not any spurt in demand for housing and commercial
properties. Users are no longer merely interested in searching for houses online,
they are also buying houses.

Better revenues
Earlier, sites such as 99acres.com and magicbricks.com only provided an online
platform for brokers to list their properties, but did not allow consumers to
complete
a
transaction.
New
entrants
such
asGrabhouse.com, commonfloor.com and housing.com among others, are offering
more than that. The second model has ensured better revenues.
Sumit Jain, founder of Commonfloor.com said, The growth in the internet base
and positive economic sentiment in the country, as well as the bullish sentiment of
investors across the globe has helped us. Since it is technology that finds the right
property, the traction in this segment is high.
The Bangalore-based start-up, which got over $30 million this year, said it is not
focusing on profits at the moment, but is generating healthy revenues. The target
is to grow the market and be profitable in the next two years, Jain added.
Along with the organised sector, even small builders have become active online.
Experts maintain that portals tend to give smaller builders unmatched visibility and
reach in the most cost effective manner, which no other media can provide.
The online property portal segment is bound to grow very well in the days to
come with growing internet penetration in the country. For sellers, the portals are

creating unmatched visibility, while for buyers it is ease of use, said Rahul Jalan,
Director Indiaonline.in, an online information system.
Online property portals also tend to have an edge over offline realty brokers, since
they can leverage technology to sell properties to a larger audience and ensure
faster conversions. For dealers and agents, it is a more locality-driven business.
Moreover, the huge brokerage fees or commissions, which are a prerequisite for
offline players, do not come into play in online deals. Brokers normally tend to
charge commissions ranging from 1-2 percent, both from the seller and the buyer.
Portals also have the added advantage of catering to just one segment of the real
estate market, making their offerings more specialised like Grabhouse.com, a oneyear-old start-up. Working on a recommendation basis, a consumer can find a
house on an urgent basis by paying a fixed nominal fee of 999, which also
includes the rental agreement fee.
Charged from both owners and seekers, the conversion rate is high, since
consumers tend to opt for this model and not go to a broker, who normally would
charge one month of the rental amount from both parties.
6 years, 3 rounds of funding and some enormous growth: With Sumit Jain,
Co-Founder, CommonFloor
It all started when they came to Bangalore in 2007 and couldnt find the right
property. After finding something to their satisfaction, many new problems
cropped up which all had their seed in the process of moving to a new house. In
this case, it was a sewage problem in the society which wasnt getting solved
because none of the society residents knew each other or had any sort of coordination to come to a conclusion. Privy to these problems, the trio of Sumit Jain,
Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani ventured out to find a solution and thus was born
CommonFloor.
We covered the company last in 2009 and since then, CommonFloor has raised two
more rounds of funding (the latest being a $7.5 million Series C investment) and

has gone on to become one of the largest online real estate portals in the country.
Here, we get in conversation with Sumit Jain to learn more.
Edited excerpts:
YourStory: CommonFloor has come a long way! Can you rewind a bit and tell
us something about the time you started up and things that gave you
confidence.
Sumit Jain: The initial thought was to develop a platform that could bring together
people who live in gated communities and had come up with CommonFloor.com in
November 2007. It was a challenge initially to get communities on board and we
had to come up with several iterations to get the product right. We also had to keep
the product flexible enough to accommodate different priorities of different
communities while still ensuring a good user experience for all. The real
confidence came when the communities that adopted us in the beginning started to
see real value in our product, appreciated our efforts and even partnered with us in
improving it. That is when we started believing that CommonFloor.com will work.
YS: So, how has CommonFloor evolved?
SJ: Our vision was always to satisfy all requirements of a person around his home.
In the initial years, we noticed a lot of owners using our platform to post listings of
their apartments. We realized that if we open this information to people outside
their gated communities, it will add much more value to these owners. Soon we
started to be known as the best place for genuine listings and started seeing a lot of
traction from those looking for a house to buy/sell or rent. We then started making
deliberate efforts to build our capabilities in real estate and today we are the third
largest real estate portal in the country in terms of unique visitors as per comScore.
YS: Anything that you believe you did differently and that it clicked?
SJ: The key difference that we have brought to the online real estate market is
while everyone looked at it from a classifieds perspective, we look at it from a
community perspective. Unlike our competitors who come into picture when a
person is buying / selling a house, we are a complete home portal and engage with
our users right from the time they are looking for a home to when they move into
their house and start living there and even when they want to sell it.

(Using their Apartment Management Software, the owners / residents benefit by

being able to connect to their neighbours online, forming interest groups and
finding neighbours who share similar interests and using CommonFloor.com as a
forum to discuss issues / topics relevant to the community. Owners / residents also
get specific updates and notices from RWA (Residents Welfare Association)
directly on their phones and e-mails, can reach out to vendors like electricians,
plumbers etc. through CommonFloor.coms directory and pay their maintenance
bills online through the integrated payment gateway. And for RWAs, our
Apartment Management Software offers features comparable to ERP systems)

YS: Tell us a bit about the reach of AMS (Apartment Management Software).
SJ: We have grown to become the largest players in this segment and are currently
present in 120 cities across the country. Around 60,000 communities are listed with
us today, constituting more than 50 Lakh homes.
YS: Can you give us a few numbers in terms of traction and some of the key
milestones over the years.
SJ: We are the fastest growing real estate portal in the country growing by more
than 100% year on year as per comScore. In Bangalore, we are the number one
property portal as per Alexa traffic rank. Today, we have more than 1000 paying
customers that include builders, agents and vendors. Our revenue has been growing
by more than 100% every quarter and we aim to achieve a turnover of $25 million
in the next two years.
We have more than 60,000 projects listed on our portal and this is the largest
compared to any property portal in India. The number of property listings has
grown by more than 500% in the past financial year and we currently have more
than one lakh live active listings.
We had also recently launched a mobile application for our users with unique
features like augmented reality and map search which allows customers to view
properties around them; using the camera on their phone. Today we have offices in
7 cities Bangalore, Gurgaon, Noida, Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai.

YS: What are the revenue streams for Commonfloor?

SJ: When it comes to revenues, our model is simple. Like Google, we offer our
services free to users and charge businesses. We generate revenue from advertising
and vendor listings. Many well-known players across various verticals such as real
estate and banking services advertise with us to reach out to people who are
looking to buy or sell property.
Vendors like architects, plumbers, carpenters etc. also use our platform to reach out
to people who own homes and advertise their services.
YS: Any particular thing that clicked for you w.r.t marketing?
SJ: As far as marketing is concerned, I think the biggest reason we have been
successful is that due to our community based approach we have been able to offer
highly genuine listings to our users. The accuracy of the information led to positive
word of mouth, which has helped us reach where we are today. We have also
focused on sharing relevant content on our website which has helped in gaining
more users.
YS: How big is the team now and what has worked for you when it comes to
hiring?
SJ: We are more than 400 people now and are looking to hire more. I think what
has worked for us has been the mindset change amongst talented Indians when it
comes to making a career decision. Not everyone today is satisfied with a 9 to 5
job at an MNC. Young Indians today want to make a difference at what they do.
They are willing to take risks and join young and innovative Indian companies.
They understand that they can grow faster and make a big difference when they
join a company that is on a growth track. The fact that we have scaled fast and
people have grown with us has also helped, particularly with referrals.
YS: Youve recently raised the third round of funding. How is it going to be
utilized?
SJ: The new funds are being used for scaling presence across multiple cities,
upgrading technology capabilities, hiring talent and expanding marketing
initiatives.

YS: What keeps you going as an entrepreneur?

SJ: We are really passionate about how we can use technology to solve peoples
requirements around their homes. Home is where we spend most of our time and
70% of our daily use expenditure is made in the radius of 2 km of our home. Yet,
we pay no attention to improving the quality of living around our homes. I think
the team at Commonfloor.com has a great opportunity to change the way
communities live. To be able to drive that change and have that kind of positive
impact on society is a huge motivating factor.
And some more points of note:
CommonFloor has recently launched an offline discussion forum for
communities called RightStep where they invite experts from different
walks of life to talk to about improving the quality of life around homes. The
first chapter of the forum was organized in Bangalore earlier this year and
brought together government officials, civic and legal experts to answer
apartment residents queries on formation & management of apartment
associations, solid waste management and sewage treatment. The second
chapter took place on the World Earth Day in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad,
Chennai and Pune to sensitize residents about the five elements of nature
and generate awareness about cell tower radiations, garbage management
and air and water pollution.
In the wake of the recent tragedy in Uttarakhand, Commonfloor
announced Finding Hope a New Homeinitiative to provide financial
assistance to build/rebuild homes and provide permanent shelter to the
calamity-struck residents of Uttarakhand. The plan is to reach out to our
user base of over 4 million monthly visitors and over 60,000 communities
across the country appealing for monetary contributions that will then be
used to rebuild homes or build new homes across the worst affected parts of
the State. As part of this initiative, CommonFloor will work in tandem with
SEEDS India, a leading non-profit organisation that seeks to protect the
lives and livelihoods of people exposed to natural disasters.

Housing.coms reported Rs 250-crore advertising campaign, Look Up, launched

in March this year, appears to have earned the company more than 4,000 visitors to
its site in a span of two months (March and April), according to comScore data.
While this is certainly the highest rate of growth among leading real estate portals,
it is contrary to the companys claim that it is the number one real estate portal,
with traffic of 11 million visits, as per Alexa rankings and
downloaded Google data.
Housing is well behind industry leaders Magicbricks and Indiaproperty in terms of
total visitors. Magicbricks registered 6,860 visitors, whereas Indiaproperty clocked
in 5,105 visitors, ahead of Housings 4,648 visitors. Traffic increased exponentially
from 799 visitors on the Housing.com website since March, with it beating
Commonfloor and 99acres in total visits in April.
The upside to the campaign was not just restricted to traffic, according to Rishabh
Gupta, COO of the company. He said compared to December 2014, the company
has been able to grow its network of developers from 3,000 to 10,500. Since April,
the company has expanded presence to 40 more cities, penetrating 101 cities. In
December we were listing 1,000 properties a day and now we are listing 5,000,
said Gupta. According to a press release issued in March, the aim is to hit 10,000
listings a day in the next three months.
Despite such exponential growth, Housing is not likely to turn profitable even in its
fourth year of operations. But Gupta does not seem worried. A former Flipkart
employee, he said, We are following a marketplace model so revenue is not our
focus at the moment. We are investing heavily in building features, which will
eventually make money. For instance, recently it acquired a Delhi-based risk
assessment company, Realty Business Intelligence, for Rs 10 crore. The company
said the acquisition will help Housing verify its listings, enabling a higher degree
of due diligence.
Some argue visits do not make money for portals, advertising income does.
Although each company has its network of developers, income is heavily
dependent on large companies with big advertising budgets. Earnings mainly
come from the top 20 developers and the top eight cities, said Narsimha

Jayakumar, chief business officer at 99acres.com, adding, As much as 90% of the

industry revenue is dependent on how well you serve this bracket.
FE independently checked with 10 large developers who use web portals to
showcase their projects. Not a single company had a clear preference of one portal
over another. All 10 companies named Magicbricks or 99acres as one of their
preferred sites, citing authentic lead generation. Developers test out portals and
list with the ones that give them most relevant leads that can turn into a sale, said
one developer who did not wish to be named. These portals invest in a number of
technological innovations and we partner with them to build the same in our micro
site, he added.
In the past eight to 10 years, real estate web portals in India have not quite figured
out how to make money. 99acres is the only firm that turned profitable for one
quarter back in 2012. The industry is not large enough for five-six players to
operate. Competition mandates high marketing cost and constant investments,
which escalate employee costs, said Jayakumar of 99acres. He added that on an
average, a company in the sector ends up spending R120 crore-Rs 160 crore a year
on marketing. Even though he did not disclose 99acres marketing cost, its 2014
revenue stood at Rs 76 crore.
The real estate portal business has witnessed an influx of competition in the past
three to four years. Although older companies such as Magicbricks and 99acres
have stuck to their original model of mainly being advertisement platforms,
Commonfloor, a site that was launched in 2011, one year before Housing, believes
in the ecosystem model. About 70% of our revenue comes from services and
advertisements related to selling properties; it occupies a much larger ticket size
than the rental market, said Vikas Malpani, co-founder of Commonfloor. But
Housing is more focused on the rental segment. We want rentals to contribute
40% to our revenue, sales to contribute another 40% and services to contribute the
remaining, said Gupta.
He also insists the management of Housing is building a different product.
Traditionally a portal that primarily enabled customers to search for properties to
buy or rent, Housing is now preparing to launch a bouquet of moving services to
cater to the relocation needs of its users, an edge none of its competitors currently
has. Our competitors are primarily advertisement platforms; we want to be more

than that, we want to create an ecosystem for anyone who wants to buy, sell, rent
and resale, said Gupta. This means buyers can not only look for properties on the
site, but also draw up a lease rental, compare home loan rates and sign up with a
bank, use relocation services, etc. The site will cater to all requirements involving
moving house and be a one-stop-shop.
Each site is exhaustively spending to collect authentic data, ensuring updated
active sales, improving customer experience and providing value-added services.
Magicbricks and 99acres boast of a developer network denser than Housing. If
Housing claims presence in 101 cities, 99acres claims presence in 200. If Housing
claims it alone has the facility to draw up a rental agreement and apply for a home
loan on its site, Magicbricks is armed by an advisory on legal and financial
matters, locality trends, etc, which are relevant information for a home buyer. To
combat Housings technological innovation slice-view, Commonfloor has
developed its retina feature, which enables a virtual reality tour. Jayakumar
added that developed market s such as the US, UK and Australia have maximum
two to three players in the online real estate space. We have already seen
consolidation with Makaan and PropTiger and I expect that more might be on the
way,.

Which
#1.
#2.
#3.
#4.
#5.

are

the

top

property

Magicbricks
99acres
Commonfloor
Housing
Indiaproperty

portals

in

India

right

now?

(www.magicbricks.com)
(www.99acres.com)
(www.commonfloor.com)
(www.housing.com)
(www.indiaproperty.com)

Thank you for your time and attention, ladies and gentlemen. The champagne and
caviar are right over there. Feel free. Those of you who need an insight into how
this
ranking
was
done
can
read
on.
How was the IREFD Top 5 Indian Property Portals Ranking Done?

First, we turned to Alexa to see what the global and Indian internet traffic rankings
of the property portals were. The top 5 sites according to alexa.com are listed in the
table
below;

In terms of the Alexa traffic ranking, 99acres.com tops the list at being the 176th
most visited website by the people of India, which is impressive. Magicbricks
follows second, in turn followed by Commonfloor at third place on the podium.
Positions four and five are held by Indiaproperty and Housing in that order. Please
note that Housing has just made the transition from housing.co.in to housing.com
which has cost them some serious rank loss at Alexa but by this time next year,
their
Alexa
rank
should
improve
significantly,
we
reckon.
In terms of bounce rates, Housing is at a cool 29.30% while Indiaproperty has a
pretty high and unhealthy bounce rate of 50%, meaning that the average home
buyer looking for property on the internet is spending a lot more time on
Housing.com
than
on
Indiaproperty.com.
In the second round of evaluation, we used the Moz Ranking System and
compared the top 5 sites we had shortlisted based on the Alexa Ranking and post
that, the one to one conversations we had with home buyers, builders and brokers.
Below is the table showing the Moz Rank Comparison of the property portals done
using OpenSiteExplorer; Moz Rank Table - India Property Portals

Quick Understanding of Terms in the Table: Page Authority - Predicts this page's
ranking potential in the search engines based on an algorithm combination of all
link
metrics
Page MozRank - Their global link popularity metric, calculated in a similar fashion
to Google's Page Rank (on a logarithmic scale from 1 -10)
Page MozTrust - Similar to MozRank, MozTrust estimates the distance from
trusted seeds using a Page Rank like calculation.

In this Moz Comparo, Magicbricks seems to have it all with the 3 green ticks,
meaning that it is currently the best portal according to Moz's ranking system and
algorithms. Housing comes in second, confirming that the force is growing steadily
and rapidly. 99acres surprisingly comes in at third place here, costing them the
overall leading position and letting Magicbricks walk away with the final top slot.
Commonfloor, followed by Indiaproperty (dudes check your bounce rates) draw up
the end at slots 4 and 5 respectively.
Putting all those observations together, over a significant period of time, we got to
that final top 5 list.
Our Personal Favourite?
Housing.com is our personal favourite. We just love the way the whole thing
works. You must try it out to know what we mean. However, if we were
Housing.com, we would have been the most afraid souls in the world of property
portals. The interface and technology that makes browsing Housing.com a treat is
not outer space science, so somewhere, as we write this, computer programmers
are coding another Housing.com like property portal. In the real world of Real

Estate, the action is in the listings. In the number of projects you have on offer. The
true game lies in conversions. We hope the people at Housing are listening.

Note for the real estate developer/ broker: Almost all developers and brokers we
spoke to said that 99acres generated the most amount of leads and sales followed
closely by magicbricks and then the others. Also, Makaan.com seems to be rising
pretty fast in terms of business yield for its advertisers and listings, which means
they are the guys to look out for in the near future. Right now, keep putting your
money on 99acres and Magicbricks. That will be money best spent.