India's Quikr buys Sequoia, Kalaari-backed Grabhouse
Indian classifieds site Quikr has purchased Grabhouse, a rental property listing platform backed by Sequoia Capital and Kalaari Capital.
Grabhouse's products and technology stack will be integrated into QuikrHomes, the real estate arm of Quikr that bought property search site CommonFloor in January. The Grabhouse team and founders will move to Quikr as well, though the company will continue operations as an independent brand for managed rental homes.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Livemint, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the all-stock transaction valued Grabhouse at $10 million.
Grabhouse operates in 11 cities, and provides a platform where users can search for available rental residences and contact landlords directly. Customers must pay a fee to see more than two search results, but broker and agency charges are otherwise eliminated. Property owners are charged a fee to list on the site.
The company raised a $10 million Series B round last year led by Sequoia and Kalaari. It was Kalaari's second investment in Grabhouse, after participating in its $2.5 million Series A round alongside India Quotient in 2014.
Quikr claims to be India's largest and broadest classifieds platform, with a presence in 1,000 cities and more than 30 million unique users each month. It has raised multiple rounds of funding since its launch in 2005 from backers including Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners India and Tiger Global. Brand Capital, an investment arm of India's Times Group, is the company's most recent investor, having committed INR1.3 billion ($19 million) in August.
Quikr has been pursuing an active acquisition strategy to strengthen its position in several verticals. Bolt-ons to QuikrHomes since last year include CommonFloor, real estate agent aggregator Indian Realty Exchange and analytics platform realtycompass. The company also added IDG Ventures-backed online hiring platform Hiree to QuikrJobs in July, and bought Bessemer Venture Partners-backed online beauty services marketplace StayGlad in September to integrate it into QuikrServices.
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