Reliance PE arm commits $12m to India real estate start-up

Founded in 2013, the company claims to have facilitated real estate investments worth more than $800 million globally, targeting the multi-residential and commercial property segments. It claims to have a net revenue run rate of $1.5-2 million and a transaction run rate of 600-800 per month, according to a report in The Economic Times linked to from Square Yards co-founder Kanika Gupta Shori's Twitter account.

The company's core product is Square Connect, a mobile-based aggregation platform for real estate brokers and independent financial advisors. Other services include Square Capital, which provides financing for transactions, and event management business Bling.

Square Yards received $11 million in pre-Series A funding from a group of Hong Kong and Singapore-based investors in May 2015. It subsequently acquired Singapore property consultancy Luxe Real Estate for an undisclosed sum.

"With this collaboration, we will be able to draw on Reliance's extensive experience, particularly in scaling up the business to a higher growth trajectory and creating significant shareholder value in the process," Tanuj Shori, another co-founder, said. "In the next 3-5 years, we intend to capture a 15% market share of primary residential sales in India and build the world's largest online-to-offline real estate distribution network."

The company has a presence in 12 cities in India and in nine countries. It wants to expand its global network to cover 25 markets and recently opened offices in Toronto and Vancouver.

An assortment of start-ups have received venture capital funding in India's property listings space, including Housing.com, CommonFloor and PropTiger. In January, CommonFloor was acquired by classifieds site Quikr, which combined the business with its own property operation, QuickHomes.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Early-stage
• Real estate
• Technology
• India
• TMT
• Venture