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Chennai-headquartered online real estate portal Indiaproperty.com said it expected to close its Series C fund, which would raise $50 million, in the next three weeks. While the lead investor will be a new one, the existing investors including JPMorgan Asset Management India, Mayfield Fund and Bertelsmann India Investment are expected to participate in the fund raising process.
Beside expanding its presence in India, the company also will make a foray in the international market with this and it will pave way for it to report break-even and go for an Initial public offering. Ganesh Vasudevan, chief executive officer, said the company had earlier raised $19 million in Series-A and B funding from JP Morgan, Mayfield and Bertelsmann.
The company was demergered from parent company Consim Info, which also owns the matrimonial website Bharat Matrimony, in April 2012. Vasudevan declined to share details on the stake dilution. He said, the Series-C would be lead by new investors, who were hedge and private equity funds, the existing investors would also participate in the third round.
"We got interest from both financial and strategic investors," he said adding the deal is in the advance stage and would be closed in the next three weeks.
The fresh funding will be used for marketing, geographical expansion (to enter East and North markets), building technology capability and to set up experience centres in US, Dubai and South East Asia. The company is looking at setting up three such centres in three cities of US, while one in Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
According to Vasudevan of the total traffic, around 2.5 million unique visitors every month, 15-20 per cent are NRIs, who are looking to buy properties in India. The company is also planning to increase its headcount to 1,600 people from 1,100.
India Property Online has 8 lakh properties listed across 20 cities, 3 million active registered users and over 1000 new projects advertised, according to company's website.
Vasudevan hopes that the company would be able to break-even in the next 12-18 months, with the support of current fund raising. "Post which we will evaluate possibility of IPO," he said
