CommonFloor, which claims to be India’s biggest listing portal with more than 500,000 listings in 200 cities, says an investment by Google Capital will help it beef up the platform to enable buyers and sellers to find a match more quickly.
Google Capital’s stake in CommonFloor was not disclosed, but the 1,000-employee company, founded in 2007, had previously raised nearly $50 million, including a $30 million funding round by an existing investor, Tiger Global, in September.
“This investment shows that Google Capital believes in CommonFloor and our vision to transform the real estate market in India,” said CommonFloor co-founder and CEO Sumit Jain in a statement. “We look forward to drawing on the technical and operational expertise of Google Capital’s partners and advisers as we continue to scale our business.”
CommonFloor, which has also mapped 10 million homes and has set a goal of mapping every property in India, also announced this week that it had acquired Bengaluru-based Bakfy, an anonymous gossip app for students that reels in close to 5,000 users at more than 60 college campuses in India.
CommonFloor doesn’t intend to use 1-year-old Bakfy — it will be shut down — but will bring the application’s three founders on as entrepreneurs-in-residence to build products for India’s mobile-only consumer base, The Times of India reports. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Google Capital’s investment in CommonFloor is the latest indication of bullish investor sentiment about the potential growth of India’s up-and-coming real estate listing portals.
Locon Solutions, operator of Indian listing portal Housing.com, raised $90 million from Japanese telecom behemoth SoftBank Group in December last year.
In November, News Corp. — the owner of realtor.com operator Move Inc. — took a 25 percent stake in the operator of 3-year-old India residential real estate portal PropTiger.com.
