[Funding alert] News Corp, group firm REA invest another $70M in Elara Technologies
Singapore-based Elara Technologies, also backed by investors like SoftBank, Accel, and SAIF Partners, will use this funding to expand its business in India.
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US-based News Corp and its Australian group firm REA has invested around $70 million (Rs 500 crore) in Elara Technologies, that owns realty portals , Makaan and , sources said.
Singapore-based Elara Technologies, which is also backed by investors such as SoftBank, Accel, and SAIF Partners, would use this fund to expand its business in India.
According to sources, the Rupert Murdoch-led News Corp and group firm REA have further invested about $70 million in Elara Technologies.
The capital infusion is in the form of a convertible note that covers the $35 million raised by Elara as debt from Citi Singapore in August last year, they added.
With this fresh funding, Elara has raised $175 million so far from investors. An email sent to Elara Technologies on the matter remained unanswered.
Elara Technologies, a digital real estate marketing and transactions services firm, has been founded by Dhruv Agarwala. He is group CEO of all the three portals – Housing, PropTiger, and Makaan.
At present, Elara is growing at a rate of more than 50 percent year-on-year. It 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.
Following the acquisition of Housing.com, the company completed a restructuring exercise to ensure optimal utilisation of resources. 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.
In January 2017, REA had invested $50 million and an affiliate of SoftBank Group Corp $5 million in Elara Technologies. It has 23 offices across India and 1,800 employees.
Earlier in April 2019, this Singapore-headquartered Elara Technologies Pte Ltd announced that it has acquired Gurugam-based rental brokerage platform .
It also claimed to be growing at over 60 percent year-on-year, and said that the acquisition will allow it to get a strong foothold in the online-to-offline home rental space, which has a market opportunity of over Rs 20,000 crore.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)
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