Excl: Chennai-based property search engine Realty Compass raises angel funding

Chennai-based Blitzkrieg Technology Pvt Ltd, the company that owns and operates property search engine startup Realty Compass, has raised an angel round of funding from a small early stage investment firm backed by a group of high-net-worth individuals, a top company executive told VCCircle.

Realty Compass was started in July this year and claims to offer an engine facilitating consumers to search each and every project in their city. Currently, it is present in four cities—Chennai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Bangalore. It seeks to provide more options to a consumer.

The startup was founded by Nimesh Bhandari (IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Guwahati) and Sankara Srinivasan (CA). Prior to founding this venture, Bhandari was managing the bus tickets business for Paytm.com overseeing business, product and marketing; and Srinivasan was working with Infosys.

"The money raised from the angel round, which was completed sometime ago, is being invested for building the product and in data gathering," Bhandari told VCCircle.

The firm is working on an offline consumer interface model which would be through agents on call. This is to facilitate services for consumers who are not internet savvy.

Bhandari said the venture currently has 3,500 listed projects and is clocking revenues of Rs 20 lakh per month mainly from Bangalore and Chennai markets.

It plans to expand to Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune and Kolkata in the next three months.

There are a number of players in the property search engine space, including mature ventures such as Times Group's MagicBricks, Info Edge's 99acres, IndiaProperty besides a slew of newer firms many of whom are backed by institutional capital such as PropTiger, Commonfloor, Housingand Favista.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)