Property discovery platform HousingMan raises seed funding

Bengaluru-based property discovery platform HousingMan, has raised $1.5 million (Rs 10.3 crore) in seed funding from a clutch of undisclosed angel investors, a company statement said.

The company will use the funds to scale its presence to key cities in the country, the statement added.

HousingMan has properties listed in 14 cities including Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. It plans to include eight more in the next year.

“We have developed tools that take into account the accurate preferences of buyers and to then recommend properties, resulting in making the decision making cycle shorter and quicker,” said Rajendran R, co-founder and chief technology officer of HousingMan.

Run by Invictus Realty Pvt. Ltd, the startup was launched in September 2015 by Bhavadeep Reddy and Rajendran R. The company’s proprietary tools assist agents in a multitude of tasks including lead generation, property suggestions or recommendations, lead conversions and real-time bidding. These tools help agents shortlist properties based on buyers’ preferences, allowing them to make the relevant recommendations.

Deals in the space

In the past few months, several ventures in the online real estate sector in India either raised fresh funds from investors or were acquired.

On Thursday, Hyderabad-based interior designing startup Foyr raised $2 million from SRI Capital.

Early this month, Info Edge (India) Ltd, which runs jobs site Naukri.com, invested Rs 3 crore (around $440,000) in ZippServ, an online platform that provides risk-assessment services for real estate investments.

In May, FastFox, an online marketplace for home rentals, bought property and broker review platform Roofpik for an undisclosed amount.

In April, Delhi-based home rental services marketplace ZiffyHomes acquired peer Nivaasa and in February, it bought rival Fella Homes.

In March, Bengaluru-based online home rental startup NestAway Technologies Pvt. Ltd raised $51 million (Rs 332.5 crore) in a Series D round of funding led by Goldman Sachs and UC-RNT Fund.

In February this year, Propstack Services, which provides information on commercial buildings, secured funds from a group of private equity and hedge fund professionals.