Square Yards acquires design studio Oryden

Property search aggregator Square Yards has acquired Oryden TechLabs, an Ahmedabad-based design and animation studio, for an undisclosed amount.

As a part of the acquisition, the entire team of Oryden will join Gurgaon-based Square Yards Consulting Pvt Ltd, the companies said in a press statement.

"Web is increasingly becoming the game changer in the real estate industry with concepts such as digital walkthrough and virtual reality helping users visualise the property and take informed decisions without actual property visit. Bringing Oryden under the Square Yards umbrella will help us enhance our design bandwidth," said Tanuj Shori, CEO, Square Yards.

Oryden will primarily work on Scapes, an e-commerce transaction engine from Square Yards. It will introduce advanced versions of digital walkthroughs so that users don't have to confine themselves to a predefined walkthrough plan, the statement said. Oryden's strengths lie in 3D architectural designs, process visualisation, digital walkthrough and virtual reality.

Oryden was founded by IIM Ahmedabad alumnus Keyur Bhalavat and design specialist Ravi Patel. The company started out as a 3-D architectural design studio but soon ventured into industrial process design and virtual reality.

"While we were doing great independently, the management and geographical bandwidth that Square Yards will help us with shall enable us to work on a wider range of projects and boost our R&D capabilities in holographic projections, 3D printing and so on," said Bhalavat.

The deal is Square Yards' third inorganic move in the last five months.

It had earlier acquired Singapore-based LUXE Real Estate for an undisclosed amount. In June, Square Yards merged real estate research portal Realizing.in with itself.

Founded in 2013 by husband-wife duo Shori and Kanika Gupta, Square Yards offers solutions for property-related needs. It caters to residential and hotel projects, student accommodation and mall redevelopment.

The company had raised $6 million (Rs 32 crore) in a pre-Series A round of funding from a clutch of unnamed investors in May this year. Square Yards claims to have clocked revenues of Rs 38 crore in the first year of operations. It has been involved in real estate transactions worth $350 million since inception, Shori had claimed earlier.

The Indian online realty market is dominated by Info Edge's 99acres and Times group-owned MagicBricks. PropTiger, CommonFloor, Housing and IndiaProperty are among other major players.

Industry watchers say several once high-flying real-estate startups – faced with deep-pocketed global players backing their rivals – are considering mergers at the behest of their investors. While IndiaProperty is trying to join hands with IndiaHomes, online classifieds firm Quikr is inching closer to buying CommonFloor.

Homers.in, a C2C platform that facilitates home rentals, recently raised its first round of funding from a clutch of angel investors.

PropTiger is partly owned by News Corp which acquired the parent of this website in March.