Housing.com

Housing.com is a Mumbai-based real estate search portal which allows customers to search for housing based on geography, number of rooms, and various other filters.[1][2] The company has 6,000 brokers and serves 40 cities in India including Chennai, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Delhi.[3][4][5]

Housing.com
Type of businessE-commerce, Real Estate, Classifieds
Available inEnglish
HeadquartersMumbai, Maharashtra, India
Area servedIndia
Founder(s)Rahul Yadav
CEODhruv Agarwala
IndustryReal estate
URLhousing.com
LaunchedJune 2012 (2012-06)
Current statusActive

History

A group of twelve students from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay founded Housing.co.in in June 2012.[1][6][7][8] The company purchased Housing.com from San Francisco-based internet entrepreneur, Peter Headington, and the telephone number 03-333-333-333 in September 2013 for a total of $1m.[9][10]

Since its founding in 2012, Housing.com has raised four rounds of funding. The company raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners in June 2013.[2][3][4][11] The company used the funds to create its Data Science Lab and to expand to four cities: Bengaluru, Gurugram, Pune, Hyderabad. [3] [12][13] The company raised another $19M in venture funding, led by Helion Venture Partners, in April 2014.[14][15]

In early March 2015, the company had a nationwide 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 India; and notably, on the company's social media pages.

In June 2015, Housing.com then-CEO Rahul Yadav accused Sequoia India MD Shailendra Singh of poaching Housing.com staff.[16] Subsequently, he was asked to leave the company altogether, citing objectionable behaviour.[17][18] Rishabh Gupta was temporarily in charge, before being replaced by Jason Kothari in November 2015.[19]

Product

Housing.com lists properties submitted by users, either brokers or owners, on an interactive map.[6] Search results are filtered by available rooms, lifestyle ratings, child friendliness index (CFI), and area-based pricing.[2][3][7][9][20]

The company has mapped approximately 650,000 houses in India.[4][12]

Data science lab (DSL)

Housing.com's Data Science Lab (DSL) has generated a number of "Heat Map" algorithms and demand flux maps based on these filters.[5][13] The CFI heat map shows child friendliness in a particular area and it measures neighborhoods on three different criteria: number of schools, number of hospitals and parks, and proximity of these facilities to the area.[9] The algorithms also demonstrate price variations in properties across the city.[5][10][21]

Housing.com is also available as apps for Android and iOS.[6]

Acquisition

Housing.com acquired real estate discussion forum, Indian Real Estate Forum (IREF), for $1.2 Million [22] and Realty BI, a risk assessment firm for realty projects, for $2 Million.[23] Housing.com acquired HomeBuy360, a cloud-based sales lifecycle management platform, for $2 million.[24] They had been merged with Proptiger.

References
  1. Shravan Bhat (12 February 2014). "housing.com: Born Out of its Founders House Hunt". Forbes India. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  2. Rebecca Grant (6 June 2014). "Funding Daily Prism". Venture Beat. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  3. Victoria Ho (6 June 2013). "With $2.5M Injection from Nexus, Indian Housing Marketplace Launches in Bangalore". TechCrunch. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  4. Nikita Peer (23 June 2014). "housing.com toying with algorithms for old-age friendliness, pollution index & helping find girl friends, too". Tech Circle. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  5. "Real Estate portal housing.com launches Price Heat Maps feature". India Digital Review. 7 October 2013. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
  6. Pritam P Hans (April 2013). "Building Search". Business Today. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  7. Samidha Sharma (4 January 2014). "Helion may lead $8M investment in housing.com". Times of India. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  8. Biswarup Gooptu & Kala Vijayraghavan (11 June 2014). "With fatter paychecks, startups rope in more talent than big cos like IBM, HUL". Economic Times. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  9. Sainul K Abudheen (15 November 2013). "Nexus Venture-backed real estate portal housing.com adds 'child friendliness index' to its site; what's new?". Tech Circle India. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  10. Anand Rai (7 October 2013). "Nexus-backed real estate portal housing.com launches price heat maps; what's on offer?". Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  11. Chitra Rakesh (6 June 2013). "Nexus Venture Partners injects $2.5M in an Indian real estate startup". Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  12. Peerzada Abrar (20 June 2014). "housing.com founded by IIT graduates makes more room for growth, mops up rs 115 crore". [The Economic Times]. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  13. Malavika Velayanika (20 June 2014). "$19M funding for Housing.com ups the ante in tech war between real estate portals in India". Tech in Asia. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  14. "Startups focus on team composition to draw investors". The Economic Times. 3 June 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  15. Diksha Dutta (25 April 2014). "Excl: housing.com raises close to $18M led by Helion Venture Partners". Tech Circle. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  16. Investors considering to remove Housing.com co-founder Rahul Yadav as CEO: Sources – timesofindia-economictimes. Articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com. Retrieved on 10 June 2016.
  17. "Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav sacked by board after email leak". The Indian Express. 1 July 2015. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  18. "Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav fired - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  19. "We are putting the house back in order: Housing.com's new CEO". http://www.livemint.com/. Retrieved 21 December 2015. External link in |website= (help)
  20. Ashish Sinha (21 January 2014). "Startup Housing.co.in takes a brilliant data based approach to house hunting". Next Big What. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  21. "Real Estate Portal housing.com Launches Price Heat Maps". Silicon India. 8 October 2013. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  22. Housing.com buys real estate forum IREF – timesofindia-economictimes. Articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com (26 March 2015). Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  23. Housing.com acquires Realty Business Intelligence for Rs 10 Cr. Tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com (12 June 2015). Retrieved on 2015-07-04.
  24. "Housing.com acquires HomeBuy360". The Hindu. 16 August 2015. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
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