India's NoBroker joins unicorn club
General Atlantic, Tiger Global Management, and Moore Strategic Ventures have participated in a $210 million Series E round for Indian real estate marketplace NoBroker at a valuation of $1 billion.
It is the 37th Indian company to achieve unicorn status in 2021. Eleven reached that landmark in 2020.
The company has now raised $360 million since inception. The Series D was structured across two tranches, with Tiger Global investing $50 million in 2019 and General Atlantic adding $30 million the following year. Its other backers include Elevation Partners, Beenext Capital Management, Fulcrum Ventures India, Digital Garage, Qualgro Partners, and KTB Ventures, according to AVCJ Research.
Founded in 2013, NoBroker seeks to eliminate brokers and agents from real estate transactions by providing an algorithm-based marketplace that matches property owners with prospective buyers and tenants. Active in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi National Capital Region, Hyderabad, and Chennai, it claims to be India’s only C2C player in this segment.
The company operates a freemium subscription model, achieving monetization through a string of complementary services such as home loans, insurance, legal documentation, painting and decorating, and packing and moving services.
“When we launched seven years back, non-brokerage was unproven and ‘not-inspired-from-US-China.’ Today, NoBroker has 16 million cumulative customers with a booming network effect. With a tripling of revenue every year, NoBroker is a clear number one in Indian real estate with an aim for leadership in home-services and property-financial services,” Amit Kumar Agarwal, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
The new capital will be used to drive expansion. NoBroker wants to deepen penetration in the cities where it currently operates and grow the overall footprint to 50 cities. The company also wants to develop NoBrokerHood, an administration app that handles bill and rental payments, visitor management, and grocery delivery services.
Akhil Gupta, another co-founder, told The Business Standard that NoBroker aims to become profitable within three years.
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