Housing.com

Housing.com
Type E-commerce, Real Estate, Classifieds
Headquarters Mumbai, India
CEO Jason Kothari
Industry Real Estate
Slogan(s) Look up
Website housing.com
Available in English
Launched June 2012 (2012-06)

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, Bangalore, Kolkata and Delhi.[3][4][5]

History

A group of twelve students from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay founded Housing.co.in in June 2012, currently having nine founders.[1][6][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]

Housing.com has raised four rounds of funding since its founding in 2012. 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: Bangalore, Gurgaon, 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]

References

  1. 1 2 Shravan Bhat (12 February 2014). "housing.com: Born Out of its Founders House Hunt". Forbes India. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 Rebecca Grant (6 June 2014). "Funding Daily Prism". Venture Beat. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Victoria Ho (6 June 2013). "With $2.5M Injection from Nexus, Indian Housing Marketplace Launches in Bangalore". TechCrunch. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 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. 1 2 3 "Real Estate portal housing.com launches Price Heat Maps feature". India Digital Review. 7 October 2013. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Pritam P Hans (April 2013). "Building Search". Business Today. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  7. 1 2 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. 1 2 3 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. 1 2 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. 1 2 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. 1 2 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. 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  18. ↑ "Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav fired - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 2015-12-21.
  19. ↑ "We are putting the house back in order: Housing.com’s new CEO". http://www.livemint.com/. Retrieved 2015-12-21. 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 on 2015-06-10.
  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. 2015-08-16. Retrieved 17 August 2015.

External links

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