PropTiger-Housing.com Merge In All Stock Deal

PropTiger, the real estate portal backed by NewsCorp and Housing.com have merged in an all-stock deal. The valuation of the deal remains undisclosed at the time of filing this report. In a statement, the global online real estate advertising company REA Group said it will invest $50 million in the joint entity. Softbank said it will put in $5 million in this joined entity which will now be led by PropTiger CEO Dhruv Agarwala. Initial reports suggest both these brands will continue to run as separate entities.

The deal comes in less than a year after online classifieds firm Quikr had acquired Commonfloor, a company which has Tiger Global as investors.

According to Tracy Fellows, Group CEO, REA, India is an important part of the company's international growth strategy and this joint entity will now have access to REA Group’s gloabl expertise.

Housing CEO Jason Kothari, who was brought in by the Softbank board after the ouster of founder Rahul Yadav, will exit the company. He will be an advisor for an additional two months.

Housing.com, a start-up venture made headlines for the ouster of its founder Rahul Yadav last year followed by most of its founders. So far, Housing.com has raised over $130 million in funding, a large chunk of it has come from Softbank. Housing has a clutch of investors including Helion Venture Partners, Nirvana Venture and Falcon Edge Capital among others.

Through this tie-up, both entities will join hands in offering the best products and services both online and offline. PropTiger says it offers its customers an end-to-end service, i.e., right from finding a house to site visits to home loans and related paperworks amongst others. It has investors including SAIF Partners and Accel Partners. PropTiger.com was founded in February 2011 by Dhruv Agarwala and Kartik Varma, classmates from Harvard Business School, along with Prashan Agarwal, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian School of Business.