PropTiger acquires 3DPhy to enhance its 3D capabilities
Online real estate advisor PropTiger on Thursday announced that it had acquired Gurgaon-based startup 3DPhy, which works in the field of Virtual and Augmented Reality, and 3D visualisations, for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, PropTiger aims to advance its technological platform to further enhance its 'hi-tech marketing' solutions for developers.
Story so far
Based in Noida, PropTiger was founded in 2011 by the experienced trio of Dhruv Agarwala, Kartik Varma and Prashan Agarwal, who are alumni of Harvard Business School, IIT and ISB respectively. As an Indian online real estate firm, PropTiger aims to offer home buyers a one-stop platform that allows users to search for homes, shortlist, visit, finalise and arrange home loans or legal services and, finally, buy the property. As an advisory firm, it also offers advice on buying, selling and investing in real estate in India. Since its inception, PropTiger claims to have sold homes worth more than Rs 10,000 crore to over 15,000 customers.
In November 2014, PropTiger.com had raised an estimated $30 million in funding in a round led by News Corp, with participation from SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and Horizen Ventures. The company also went on to acquire Makaan.com and interactive technology firm OoBi, to give home buyers better access to a full stack of services – from online search to assistance with transactions.
Related read from 2015: PropTiger and Makaan break the compound wall, gear up for bigger battles
Founded by a group of IIT Kharagpur alumni – Amit Shekhar, Rajeev Kumar, Uttam Kumar and Raghvendra Polinki, 3Dphy creates and simulates a near-real experience for prospective buyers through 360-degree panoramas and virtual tours. These tools allow home buyers to not just “see” the surroundings, but also “walk” in them and effectively judge the sizes, shapes, spaces and dimensions.
Sector overview
The Indian real estate sector has witnessed growth, market corrections and consolidations in the last two years. In January 2016, Quikr announced that it had acquired CommonFloor for an undisclosed amount to integrate it with its offering 'Quikr Homes'. Then there are other well funded players like SoftBank-backed Housing.com and real estate advisory firm Squareyards, which had claimed to have over 100 crores in revenue in September 2015. More recently in June 2016, YourStory learnt from multiple sources that Housing was in talks to merge with Sqaureyards.
Related read from June 2016: [EXCLUSIVE] Housing in talks to merge with real estate advisory firm Square Yards
Future plans
Through the acquisition, PropTiger aims to bring together their complementary technology platforms and capabilities to address its current technological gaps and to better support customers in decision-making. By providing end-to-end technology and consulting solutions, PropTiger intends to offer greater flexibility and choice, and improved user experience for its customers.
Dhruv, CEO, PropTiger.com and makaan.com, believes that the acquisition will help PropTiger make the home search experience more immersive.PropTiger envisions use cases where 3DPhy's technology will enable builders and brokers to showcase multiple properties over phones, laptops, tablets or head-mounted devices.
With mobile devices overtaking desktops, the real estate sector has become one of the prime sectors, where people want to have the ability to search anywhere and anytime, and that is a big priority for us.
Website- PropTiger