Softbank-backed Housing.com enters co-living listing business; partners with OYO, Zolo
Housing.com, which is also backed by Softbank, Accel, and SAIF Partners, has tied up with OYO Life and Zolo to promote their co-living spaces on its platform.
News Corp-backed real estate classifieds portal Housing.com on Monday announced its entry in the co-living segment, and has tied up with OYO and Zolo, as well as unorganised players for listing around five lakh beds on its platform.
Housing.com, part of Singapore-based Elara Technologies that also owns PropTiger.com and Makaan, released a report on co-living which highlighted that the market size of this segment is estimated to double at Rs 2 lakh crore by 2023.
"We are entering into the co-living segment which is a big growth area. We have launched an exclusive section for co-living on our Housing.com. As of now, it will work as search and discovery platform, but direct bookings on our platform will be enabled later," Housing.com CEO Dhruv Agarwala said.
Housing.com, which is also backed by Softbank, Accel, and SAIF Partners, has tied up with OYO Life and Zolo to promote their co-living spaces on its platform.
At present, the classifieds platform has around five lakh beds across major cities -- Delhi-NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Chandigarh, Agarwala said.
Out of the five lakh beds, around 50,000 beds are from OYO and Zolo.
"We plan to scale up this listing to a million beds by the end of 2020," he said.
Asked about the revenue model, Agarwala said it could be through advertising and the co-living segment would become a significant revenue generator for Housing.com in coming years.
"The way in which the concept of co-working is changing how traditional commercial workspaces operate in India, co-living is transforming traditional renting. The change is driven by a highly mobile millennial workforce and a growing student population with a new mindset," Agarwala said.
Recently, the US-based News Corp and its Australian group firm REA made a fresh investment of around $70 million (Rs 500 crore) in Elara Technologies, sources had said.
With this fresh funding, Elara has raised $175 million (about Rs 1,250 crore) so far from investors.
Elara Technologies first set up PropTiger.com in 2011 and then acquired Makaan.com in May 2015.
In a major consolidation in the Indian online real estate business, Elara acquired Housing.com in January 2017, a startup founded in 2012 by around a dozen IIT graduates.
While PropTiger helps developers in selling flats available in the primary market, Makaan.com largely deals in buy-sell of re-sale properties.
Housing.com is a classified platform for developers, brokers, and homeowners with over one million listings.
Elara has 23 offices across India and 1,800 employees.
(Edited by Suman Singh)
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