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Google Capital backs India real estate platform CommonFloor

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Google Capital has provided a new round of funding for CommonFloor.com, an India-based property listings website.

The size of the investment was not disclosed but it comes approximately three months after the company raised $30 million in Series D funding from Tiger Global Management. According to AVCJ Research, Tiger Global and Accel Partners provided each of the three previous rounds to that one.

Launched in 2007 by maxHeap Technologies, CommonFloor claims to provide an end-to-end service comprising property search, apartment management and vendor management. The platform includes a map-based mobile app that indicates available properties in an area and provides photographic verification of listed properties.

CommonFloor has over 500,000 property listings across 100,000 residential projects in 200 cities, more than any other property platform in India. Its mapping system has catalogued 10 million homes and is aiming to cover every property in India. CommonFloor receives more than seven million monthly online visits, predominantly from large urban areas such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.

When Tiger Global invested last September, the company said it wanted to scale up its marketing and on-the-ground operations to cover an additional 22 markets. At the time it was present in 18 cities. The company currently employs around 1,000 people.

In the past 12 months, CommonFloor has completed two acquisitions, picking up anonymous social messaging app Bakfy - for the expertise of its founders in building social networks, not for the app - and Flat.to, a real estate service targeting students and bachelors.

The new funding from Google Capital will be used to strengthen the platform from a technical and operational perspective and improve user experience.

"CommonFloor.com makes it easy for people in India to research, buy, sell and rent real estate," David Lawee, a partner at Google Capital, said in a statement. "The online real estate market in India is poised for tremendous growth, which is why we're excited to work closely with CommonFloor's excellent team in the months and years ahead."

CommonFloor received its first round of funding from Tiger Global, Accel and a number of undisclosed investors in October 2012. The two investment firms then committed INR450 million ($7.5 million) in July 2013 and INR640 million in January 2014.

India's online real estate market is expected to benefit from the government's pledge to invest INR40 billion in affordable housing by 2022. In addition, interest rates on home loans have been lowered and certain restrictions on foreign investment in the construction sector have been relaxed.

Last month, SoftBank Group led a $90 million round of funding for Locon Solutions, operator of property listing platform Housing.com, while in November News Corp. paid $30 million for a 25% stake in the parent of PropTiger.com, a property marketing platform backed by SAIF Partners and Accel Partners.

Google Capital - a $300 million growth-stage VC fund launched last year - has previously invested in India-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) customer support platform Freshdesk and Chinese optical transceiver manufacturer InnoLight Technology.

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