First ever funding by a Korean investor in India
As an extension to the Series B funding, NoBroker.com has raised $7 million ( INR 50 crores). This extension round is led by Korean investor KTB Network. This is the extension of $10 mn Series-B round announced few months back this year, taking cumulative Series-B round to $17 mn. With $3 mn in Series-A funding early last year, this takes the total funding raised by NoBroker.com to $20 million from its inception.
This funding round was led by KTB Network and existing investors- SAIF Partners, BEENEXT & Digital Garage also participated in the funding.
“I am impressed with the differentiated and disruptive business model of NoBroker, which is solving a huge latent customer demand. NoBroker has already served millions of rent seekers and home owners to find one another, seamlessly through its platform, since its inception in 2013. I am constantly impressed by the customer-centricity at NoBroker and have no doubt that it will continue to champion its customers need. With a large and growing Indian population, NoBroker has the potential to become market leader in this large real estate market†said Chunsoo Kim, Venture Capitalist at KTB Network.
Amit Agarwal, CEO & Co- Founder, NoBroker.com, said “This is special because this is the first time that a Korean fund has led the funding round for an Indian startup. Their Korean start up experiences will help us further with innovative ideas so that we can continue to grow exponentially. We are at an excellent position now in terms of customer growth and financials. Global network of KTB will also aid us in our future global ambitions.â€
NoBroker.com has seen a steady growth curve this year. Though the real estate sector saw a series of and ups and downs this year complete with many mergers and acquisitions. NoBroker registered sustained growth matrix. The year started with NoBroker.com raising $10 million in Series B funding. The last couple of months saw entrepreneurial stalwarts like Anand Chandrasekaran and Vijay Shekhar Sharma also investing undisclosed amounts in NoBroker.com. “We are glad to have KTB as our investor. These additional funds have put us in a strong position from overall capital perspective. Our aim is to use these funds to expand rapidly and move towards becoming the number one online real estate player in India in terms of closed transactions in next 24 months” says Akhil Gupta , CTO & Co- Founder, NoBroker.com.
NoBroker has served 1.5 million customers till date, making it the world’s largest C2C real estate platform. NoBroker is adding more than 1 lakh new registered customers on a monthly basis now and witnessing 5 lakh customer connections every month which results in a saving of more than 20 crores of brokerage monthly. NoBroker.com recently moved to a freemium subscription-fee based model and has been growing revenues aggressively. Unlike many other ‘east-copy-west’ businesses, it’s a built-for-India business model with no direct comparison with any other large online real estate player worldwide. This is the first time that customers are paying upfront platform-usage fees in real estate since they can clearly see 80-90% savings in their transaction cost.
There is a huge customer demand and acceptance of a brokerage-free real estate marketplace. In fact, the market size of residential rental and resale brokerage alone in top 20 cities in India is a whopping $6.5 billion which is estimated to grow to $17 billion over the next 5 years.
The problem that NoBroker.com is trying to solve has massive scale and impact since home effects almost everybody’s life. Before NoBroker.com, a typical rental transaction would cost 2 months brokerage and a resale transaction used to cost buyers & sellers a combined 4 to 6 per cent of the deal value as brokerage. NoBroker has managed to crash this transaction cost and put the savings back in customer’s pocket.
Not just rentals, but NoBroker.com is the first and only online real estate firm in India to offer brokerage-free Buying/Selling of properties. With such disruptive moves in an age-old industry, NoBroker.com is attempting to transform the way real estate transactions take place by doing what has never been done before.
