CommonFloor appoints Vinayak Warke as VP for marketing

Bangalore-based maxHeap Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns the real estate and apartment management portal CommonFloor.com, has appointed Vinayak Warke as its vice president for marketing. In his new role, Warke will be heading the product marketing, brand building and management efforts at the company. He will also be responsible for increasing the site traffic through both online and offline marketing initiatives, growing the user base and market expansion, as well as providing marketing support to the sales team.

An engineer from the University of Mumbai and a post graduate in management studies from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Warke headed marketing and sales for BGG Information Pvt Ltd, prior to joining CommonFloor. He had previously also held managerial positions with Bennett Coleman & Co, Sony Entertainment Television, Ogilvy & Mather, UTV and Walt Disney India. "CommonFloor is poised for rapid growth in the property portal industry, with respect to its product offerings, technological edge and traffic growth," said Warke.

Founded in 2007 by Sumit Jain (CEO) and Lalit Mangal (both have degrees in Computer Science from IIT Roorkee), along with Vikas Malpani, a Computer Science graduate from Visvesvaraya Technological University in Belgaum, Karnataka, CommonFloor combines property search, apartment management and vendor management. It also facilitates interactions within an apartment community (on the 'common floor' platform) and connects people to relevant service providers. CommonFloor is present in 120 cities and has over 85,000 communities listed with it.

Last July, the firm had secured $7.5 million in Series C round of funding from existing investors Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)