Quikr launches QuikrHomes

QuikrHomes, the real estate vertical of the online classifieds listing platform Quikr, has been unveiled five months after it was announced. Tiger Global-backed Quikr's entry would further add to the competition in the online realty segment which is already intensified with eight VC-backed players battling it out for market dominance.

The launch of QuikrHomes is part of Quikr's larger plan to have separate verticals for key segments such as real estate, cars, electronics, jobs and education. "Verticalisation was an obvious logical step to have our users further benefit from the true breadth and scale of our platform," said Pranay Chulet, founder and CEO of Quikr.

Quikr had hired Favista co-founder Manish Sinha in April to head real estate vertical and initiated talks with CommonFloor which also is backed by Tiger Global to inorganically expand in this sector as first reported by VCCircle.

It had held preliminary talks with a number of competitors in the online property listing space including Housing.com too. However, this appears to have made little progress.

Quikr, according to industry officials, is still on the prowl and has revived talks with CommonFloor. When asked, both Sumit Jain, CEO of CommonFloor, and Pranay Chulet of Quikr did not respond.

Meanwhile, online real estate segment is witnessing a consolidation drive with IndiaProperty and IndiaHomes trying to team up to build a full-scale player engaged in both listing and transaction. News Corp-backed PropTiger, a transaction-focused player, had bought over online property listing site Makaan.com in May. Quikr claims that with 200,000 transactions, its real estate business has doubled in the last three years."With Indian real estate marketing moving online to capture a $20 billion market coupled with our cross category platform, we are uniquely positioned to capture the market share for our homes vertical," said Manish Sinha, head of QuikrHomes.

Quikr raised $150 million (over Rs 900 crore) in April from Tiger Global, Swedish fund Kinnevik and hedge fund Steadview Capital Management. The company, whose other backers include Omidyar Network, Matrix Partners, Nokia Growth Partners, Warburg Pincus, Norwest Ventures, and eBay Inc, has so far raised $350 million, according to data from VCCEdge.

News Corp, which owns 30 per cent stake in PropTiger, had acquired the parent of this website in March.