- Manish Sinha, Head, QuikrHomes
Quikr is India´s leading cross-category classifieds platform used by over 30 million unique users a month. It operates in over 10 categories, one of which is real estate. Quikr´s investors include Warburg Pincus, Kinnevik, Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners, Nokia Growth Partners, Steadview Capital, Omidyar Network, and Ebay Inc.
As the company dives deeper into the real-estate market, Manish Sinha, Head, QuikrHomes, shares more on the company, its acquisitions and strategies.....
Please introduce us to your latest three acquisitions, realtycompass, Indian Realty Exchange (IRX) and CommonFloor. What is the core strategy behind each one?
With the Indian real-estate segment moving online, we want to bring more choices and innovative product offerings for buyers and sellers with the comfort of just a few clicks. The investments made towards IRX, realtycompass and CommonFloor are important strategic moves towards this goal and to establish QuikrHomes as the undisputed leader in the online real-estate space by providing more value to our end-consumers.
In addition to these, we have also made a strategic investment in AN Virtual World Tech Ltd, the company that powers Street Vision to enable 360 street views for our consumers.
How much are these acquisitions worth, and how will they prove to be an asset to QuikrHomes? How do you plan to utilise the assets to ensure a return on your investment?
Each of the investments we have made will help strengthen and complement QuikrHomes. IRX´s acquisition will increase long-term engagement with the broker community, realtycompass offers ratings and user recommendations, which address the needs of the evolved home buyers and investors who seek better decision-making tools, and CommonFloor´s structured data and domain expertise will benefit QuikrHomes to further accelerate its growth.
What would your value addition be to the existing brand image of realtycompass, IRX and CommonFloor? Are there any improvisations you would like to make in their current functioning?
The real strategic reason backing each of these investments is to create more value and not to remove the value these brands have created. The combined force of all the companies will create a strong online real-estate industry leader, which has the largest inventory and property-seeker traffic in the country.
How will your acquisition of IRX help you broaden your reach to the brokers´ community?
IRX is a mobile-first aggregator of the real-estate broker community that tags agents and brokers with real-time projects and locations and helps users connect with them to buy and sell property. We will cross-leverage each other´s strengths to tap into this vital segment of the home-buying and renting ecosystem.
What is your strategy behind letting realtycompass operate as a standalone portal in the real-estate market?
As mentioned earlier, the idea behind letting realtycompass operate as a stand-alone portal is to honour the commitment towards its customers.
Also, as reported, the CommonFloor heads hold a chance to be a part of the Quikr board. What are your plans in this direction, and what could one expect?
We are a couple of months away from finalising the details of the merger but are happy about joining forces to ride the real-estate wave together. Together, we will have the largest number of listings and page views while we bring together consumers, brokers and builders across over 1,000 Indian cities and towns. Our consumers are the real winners here as they will have access to a wider range of innovative products that revolutionise the home-buying experience in India. CommonFloor´s CF Retina and Live-In tours coupled with Street Vision and Facilities Mapping features offered by QuikrHomes will up the game and pave the way for a more convenient and transparent way to close real-estate transactions online.
Investors such as Warburg Pincus, Kinnevik, Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners India and many more have invested in your organisation. How will these acquisitions help in retaining them?
The objective of each of these investments was not fund-raising but rather making the most of complementary business models. Partnering with the right people is a sure-shot way to success and we are happy to be working together.
With these acquisitions, what are your plans in the coming fiscal?
The plan for the year ahead is to strengthen our offerings and reach to sustain a leadership position within this space.
Can we look forward to more such acquisitions in 2016?
QuikrHomes was launched in September last year with a focus to create an all-inclusive real-estate marketplace for builders, brokers and home-seekers. Currently, we connect customers from over 1,000 cities and towns across India and help conclude over 2 lakh transactions on our platform per month. The focus for the year ahead is growth and we will continue to build QuikrHomes both organically and inorganically.
