Nexus Venture-backed real estate portal Housing.com adds 'child friendliness index' to its site; what's new?

Real estate portal Housing.com (earlier Housing.co.in) has added child friendliness index (CFI) (housing.com/in/DSL/CFI/mumbai) to its platform, essentially a heat map to assess the child friendliness of a particular area. The addition comes close on the heels of portal introducing an 'agents map' feature to help property seekers identify their nearest agent.

"CFI is a heat map of child friendliness of a particular area. Knowing CFI of an area is an important criterion for all families looking to shift to a new geography," said Advitiya Sharma, co-founder, Housing. According to Sharma, CFI measures neighbourhoods on three different criteria: 1) number of schools in an area, 2) number of hospitals and parks in an area, and 3) proximity of these facilities to the area. The schools in an area are given greater weightage in creating the final composite score. The areas are then ranked and graded according to their child friendliness and are displayed on a heat map. Now, with this feature, when people look for a home they can always make sure that it is in a neighbourhood that's excellent for children.

Early last month, Housing added a 'price heat map' feature enabling users to check prices of localities across a city on a map.

Founded in 2012, the startup enables real estate brokers to upload unlimited listings on the site while users can search properties for free. The venture is owned and operated by Mumbai-based Locon Solutions Pvt Ltd and currently has 30 IIT graduates on board. The service is currently available in seven cities—Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Gurgaon, Chennai, Noida and Ghaziabad.

In September this year, the startup bought the Housing.com domain name as well as a national number 03-333-333-333, for $1 million. The purchase was done as a first step for the company's international expansion.

Housing.com had raised $2.5 million in pre-Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners in June this year. Prior to that, it attracted two rounds of angel funding. In March 2013, the company raised angel funding from former Network18 CEO Haresh Chawla, immediately after securing an undisclosed sum from a group of angel investors, led by Zishaan Hayath, co-founder of the phone commerce company Chaupaati Bazaar, which was acquired by Kishore Biyani's Future Group a couple of years ago.

The company had recently appointed Richa Bansal, co-founder and managing director of online jewellery and fashion accessories retailer 21Diamonds.in, as its chief business officer.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)