Housing.co.in secures $2.5m funding from Nexus Venture Partners
Housing.co.in, a fast growing completely map based real estate search portal announced that it has raised $2.5m of funding from Nexus Venture Partners, India’s leading VC fund. Housing.co.in has changed house hunting process through its useful user interface which empowers users with the ability to view a house without necessitating physical presence.
Housing.co.in was founded eleven months ago by a group of IIT Bombay students who chose to invest in their brainchild with the intention of disrupting the online real estate market with best in class data and technology. This is their third round of funding after an angel round from Zishaan Hayath and bridge round from Haresh Chawla. This round by Nexus Venture Partners is a pre Series-A round. The current round of funding will allow the company to aggressively expand its technology and data sciences teams with over 30+ IITians in these teams.
Housing.co.in portal is known for its clean UI and interface. But it's real strength lies in its data and since its inception the company has been focused on its data approach. The Data Science Lab will develop features like area based pricing, society ratings etc. The company is also building large headquarters for the technology team which will be a major investment.
Advitiya Sharma, co-founder, Housing.co.in, says, “We are very happy to partner with and receive mentoring from India’s leading VC, Nexus Venture Partners. Their experience in building high technology companies in India and abroad is what attracted us. We were just amazed by the speed of their decision making and trust they had in our team”.
Suvir Sujan, co-founder, Nexus Venture Partners, says, “The Housing team is disrupting online search for home buying and renting in India like never before. We were very impressed with the vision, passion and speed of execution of the founding team and we are excited to partner with them”.
Update -
We spoke with Abhimanyu Dhamija, who heads the data sciences department at Housing.co.in, for which this round of funding was raised. Abhimanyu shared with us some of the products and services that will spawn out of the data sciences department at Housing.co.in. He says, "The idea came to us as we went on collecting more and more real estate data from the various cities that we're in. Essentially, we're looking to leverage the data that Housing.co.in will generate." Abhimanyu, though a part of the founding team, was with the Citigroup and has only recently come on board Housing.co.in full time.
The team aims to launch some interesting products like Area Based Pricing Model and Lifestyle rating. Abhimanyu says, "Lifestyle rating is to rate the lifestyle that you would enjoy in a property based on factors like it's surroundings, the peripherals, the kind of shops next to it etc. We will be launching it in Mumbai first because we enough data to do so."
The team also intends to put out research reports. Abhimanyu says, "Things like how an price of land in an area will go up because of the building of an SEZ or a mall are just some of the interesting trends the data we have will throw up."
This is a great move by Housing.co.in for two reasons - a) There aren't many who do this around the world and other than Commonfloor no one else does this, specifically for the Indian market and b) it is a new (possibly lucrative) revenue stream for the company. Abhimanyu shared that the company would be looking to monetize some their data sciences lab's exports.
Housing.co.in calls the round a "pre series A" round and Abhimanyu has shared that they are in talks with a lot of VCs for another round of funding. More news to come? We will see.
