Exclusive: Grabhouse raises $500K from India Quotient, to launch short term accommodation soon

Mumbai-based Grabhouse, the first online roommate search engine which helps people find compatible roommates, has raised $500k from India Quotient. The raised capital will be used to bridge the gap of offline availability of houses through owners and online search by seekers.

The startup offers an online platform for tenants to contact owners directly without involving real estate agents thus saving hefty amounts of brokerage. It has built the fastest recommendation engine for house seekers so that only suitable and available houses are shortlisted. This helps users minimize time and effort spent in house hunting.

Grabhouse was a part of India Quotient’s bootcamp last year, and also made a small investment earlier this year.

The company is operational in four cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Earlier in January this year, it raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from early-stage investment firm India Quotient and MV Krishnan, Vice President, Deutsche Bank.

At present, Grabhouse lists 53,338 broker free houses on the platform, and is adding 350 plus houses, 250 seeker profiles and fulfilling 85 everyday. “To ensure fulfillment we have a team of house hunting experts that assist seekers and tie up with housing societies so that bachelor friendly houses can be differentiated from houses that are available only for families,” says Pankhuri Shrivastava, Co-founder Grabhouse.

The company will soon launch neighbourhood recommendation feature which will change the way newcomers find houses. “Based on the preferences of users, our platform will recommend the best neighbourhood and give them vital information about that neighbourhood,” adds Pankhuri.

Besides this, it will also roll-out short term accommodation for students through which juniors are accommodated by alumni of college unofficially. “We are making this streamlined by giving a platform where alumni can offer to host their junior from college/city for short term,” she says.

Speaking about the thesis behind the investment, Anand Lunia, Partner at India Quotient, says, “Grabhouse helps consumers save money on brokerage while renting accommodation, especially for the younger, 18-35 age group. The team has built a great technology platform and they have shown very good traction in the last few months. This bridges the gap between free classifieds sites like Quickr/OLX and brokerage focused sites like 99acres, and magicbricks etc.”